RE: Discussing Book of Mormon anachronisms

It became part of BYU in 1961, while Thomas Ferguson was still its head. The same year he predicted that the cities mentioned in the BoM would be found within the next decade. Its current head is a BYU archaeology professor.

The NWAF was definitely funded by the church. Here’s a PDF document from FARMS. On page 223 (that’s page 3, according to Acrobat Reader), the footnote numbered 8 says:

The NWAF was initially a private foundation, incorporated by Ferguson in California in October 1952. He persuaded the church to finance it in 1954. In 1961 it was incorporated into Brigham Young University. By the early seventies the foundation was administered by the dean of the College of Social Science. In 1990 the Department of Anthropology assumed responsibilities for its administration. See John L. Sorenson, “Brief History of the BYU New World Archaeological Foundation,” paper delivered at the opening of an exhibition at Brigham Young University displaying the work of the NWAF on the occasion of the BYU Centennial in April 1975, pp. 2, 6, typescript in possession of Daniel C. Peterson.

From the rest of the paper, clearly FARMS has a much higher regard of NWAF and their work than you do.