The New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF) was incorporated on 20 October 1952, in the state of California, as a nonprofit, scientific, fact-finding body. It emerged out of discussions the previous year between Thomas Stuart Ferguson, Alfred V. Kidder of the Carnegie Institution, and Gordon Willey of Harvard University regarding “the status of archaeology in Mexico and Central America.”

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Several relevant facts stand out from this bare-bones recital of the earliest history of the New World Archaeological Foundation. First, non–Latter-day Saint archaeologists were prominent—in fact, dominant—from the beginning, not only in choosing central Chiapas as the geographical focus of its excavations, but in making the pitch for support from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in directing and carrying out NWAF’s fieldwork. Second, far from betraying an eager zeal to back a hunt for Book of Mormon artifacts and “proofs,” the leadership of the church was manifestly reluctant to fund NWAF. Third, the participation of the eminent non-Mormon archaeologists Alfred V. Kidder and Edwin Shook in proposals for financial support from the First Presidency ensured that those proposals did not focus at all on NWAF’s potential usefulness in Book of Mormon apologetics. Fourth, church financial support first came in 1953 (and then on a much larger scale in 1955) and not, as the Tanners claim, only after a supposed string of failed BYU archaeological expeditions that ended in 1961.

As a matter of fact, the New World Archaeological Foundation has never worked directly on Book of Mormon questions, has always sought and received the collaboration of prominent non-Mormon researchers, and has by no stretch of the imagination been “fruitless” in its expeditions’ findings.