In 1933 she spent six months studying modern techniques and design under Buckminster Fuller at the Dymaxion factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

[3] In spring 1935 Davis traveled to Russia to learn how Russian artists were organized and how socialized patronage affected their work.

She concluded that Soviet artists failed to innovate because "the cheap academic traditions have been continued under the name of 'socialist realism'—that is, all the facts and none of the meaning of the subject.

She worked Science Direction at the San Diego Museum of Man, while continuing her desert studies, focusing on the southern California region of China Lake.

According to Joseph L. Chartkoff, Davis was "one of the most important figures in bringing scientific rigor and credibility to Paleoindian archaeology in California.