Video Gallery
MAS 2026 Keynote Address: Tobacco and Pictograph and Petroglyph Sites in the American West – by Lawrence Loendorf
Larry Loendorf is one of the foremost researchers of Native American petroglyphs and pictographs. The following bio is taken from his Sacred Sites Research, Inc website:
Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Loendorf was born and raised in Montana. His B.A. and M.A. degrees are in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Montana, and his Ph.D. is from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He taught at the University of North Dakota for 22 years
and then moved to undertake research and teaching at New Mexico State University. Currently, he is the President of Sacred Sites Research, Inc., a non-profit company that is dedicated to protecting ancient pictograph and petroglyph sites.
Loendorf’s early career was as a “dirt” archaeologist. Working with field crews, he located and excavated dozens of sites in the Pryor Mountain-Bighorn Canyon region and on the High Plains from North Dakota to New Mexico. For the past thirty years, he has concentrated on rock art related research projects. This research was often in Colorado and New Mexico, although he directed a three-year project recording rock art sites in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.
He has written numerous scholarly articles with two books directed primarily toward rock art Ancient Visions: Petroglyphs and Pictographs from the Wind River and Bighorn Country, Wyoming (with Julie Francis) and Montana and Thunder and Herds: Rock Art of the High Plains. He has also completed research into the former lifeways of the Sheep Eater Indians in Yellowstone National Park, writing the book Mountain Spirit: The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone (with Nancy Stone).
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MAS 2025 Keynote Address, Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeño: Billy Big Spring and the Blackfoot Early Origins Program
Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeño gave the keynote address at the 2025 meeting of the Montana Archaeological Society in Livingston, Montana on April 12. Her work with the Blackfoot Confederacy in collaboration with genomic researchers shows that “the genomics of sampled individuals from the Blackfoot Confederacy belong to a previously undescribed ancient lineage that diverged from other genomic lineages in the Americas in Late Pleistocene times.” During her talk, Dr. Zedeño described her work along with co-author Francois Lanoë in northern Montana at the Billy Big Spring site and the fascinating details of discovering evidence of the Blackfoot people in Montana and Canada during Pleistocene glacial times.
MAS 2025 Film Screening: The Life & Legend of John Colter
This film by geologist/filmmaker Daniel Smith was shown on day one of MAS 2025. Interpretive biologist and storyteller Ken Sinay who told the story in the film was available to discuss Colter’s legend and the sources including Lewis & Clark’s journals and other fur trapper journals from the early nineteenth century.
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Prairie Skyscrapers: Disappearing Artifacts of Central Montana’s Agricultural Landscapes
The History and Heritage Public Lecture Series and Preserve Historic Missoula teamed up to present “Prairie Skyscrapers: Disappearing Artifacts of Central Montana’s Agricultural Landscapes”. Kate Geer and Jared Schmitz, both with A&E Design, discussed the history and future of grain elevators throughout Montana.
Montana's Indiana Jones
