Qualla: Arizona State Museum https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:03 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Arizona State Museum https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum Arizona State Museum: Introduction https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Jannelle Weakly, CC BY-SA 3.0. Twenty thousand pottery vessels rest in climate-controlled darkness, each one a message from hands that shaped clay centuries before Europeans arrived in the Americas. The Arizona State Museum was founded in 1893, just one year after the University of Arizona opened its doors, making it older than Arizona statehood itself. The Territorial Legislature recognized something profound: the desert around Tucson held evidence of civilizations stretching back ten thousand years, and someone needed to protect it before settlers destroyed what the Apache wars had not. Today, the museum holds the world's largest collection of Southwest Indian pottery, safeguarded in a state-of-the-art vault that maintains precise temperature and humidity levels to preserve fragile clay that survived centuries in the open ground.

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Image: Jannelle Weakly | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Arizona State Museum: Guardians of Deep Time https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Desiree, CC BY-SA 3.0. Emil W. Haury arrived at the museum in 1937 and would spend the next 27 years directing excavations that rewrote the prehistory of the Southwest. His work at Snaketown uncovered the Hohokam culture, irrigation farmers who built canals across the desert floor 1,500 years ago. Haur...

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Image: Desiree | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-guardians-of-deep-time.mp3 0:06 2 full Arizona State Museum: Beyond the Dig https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Desiree, CC BY-SA 3.0. Not everything in the museum came from excavation. Tribal members have donated family treasures. Collectors have bequeathed lifetime accumulations. The result is a collection spanning both archaeology and ethnology, holding items from cultures that thrived and vanished alongside ...

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Image: Desiree | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-beyond-the-dig.mp3 0:06 3 full Arizona State Museum: Paper Trails to the Past https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Desiree, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Office of Ethnohistorical Research maintains over 17,000 documents from the Spanish colonial period, records of missions and mines, military expeditions and failed settlements. The Documentary Relations of the Southwest database makes these records searchable, allowing resear...

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Image: Desiree | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-paper-trails-to-the-past.mp3 0:06 4 full Arizona State Museum: Living Relationships https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Tichnor Brothers, Publisher, Public domain. The museum maintains active relationships with tribes across the Southwest, not as subjects of study but as partners in preservation. Tribal members visit to evaluate objects and advise on display. Museum staff travel to tribal communities to consult on collections. When federal ...

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Image: Tichnor Brothers, Publisher | Public domain

]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-living-relationships.mp3 0:06 5 full Arizona State Museum: A Smithsonian in the Desert https://qualla.com/arizona-state-museum/ Photo credit Zereshk, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Arizona State Museum became a Smithsonian affiliate, joining a network of institutions committed to the highest standards of collection care and public education. The museum administers the Arizona Antiquities Act, issuing permits for archaeological work on state lands and en...

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]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/t/9/p/arizona-state-museum-wp/9t9p-arizona-state-museum-a-smithsonian-in-the-desert.mp3 0:06 6 full