[4] With Cummings's encouragement, she went on to graduate study, and, in 1928, became one of the university's first three recipients of master's degrees in archaeology, along with fellow students Florence May Hawley and Emil Walter Haury.
[3] Her involvement in her husband's work was another influence that shifted her research interests in the direction of regional cultural anthropology.
[5][8] Tanner had regularly taken part in the university's summer excavation programs, and conducted archaeological and ethnological research at San Carlos and at the Tanque Verde ruins, a site of prehistoric dwellings.
[5] Later, in the interest of her research she traveled extensively throughout the Southwest; besides conducting archaeological studies she visited Native American craftspeople to observe them at work.
[7] Reviewing her book Southwest Indian Craft Arts in 1969, archaeologist Neil Judd noted her expertise in the handicrafts of approximately two dozen ethnic groups of the region, and found that the book, with its meticulously accurate illustrations, successfully conveyed the changes in crafts over two generations.