Career
In the 1880s, the Stevensons "formed the first husband-wife team in anthropology." Matilda Coxe Stevenson"s contributions often focused on women and family life, for which she "quickly developed a reputation as a vigorous and devoted scientist"
In 1885, Matilda Coxe Stevenson became the first President of the Women"s Anthropological Society of America. After 1889 she was on the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Stevenson explored the cave, cliff, and mesa ruins of New Mexico, studied all the Pueblo tribes of that state, and from 1904 to 1910 made a special study of the Taos and Tewa Native Americans.
Artifacts collected by Matilda and James Stevenson are in the collections of the Department of Anthropology in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.
Papers from Stevenson are in the Institution"s National Anthropological Archives. Among Stevenson"s "protegés" were John Peabody Harrington.