As part of the Saturday Series events, Historic St. Mary's Mission
is hosting Montana Conversations: “Six Hundred Generations: Exploring the Indigenous Archaeology of Montana” with Carl M. Davis on Saturday, April 18 at 11:00 A.M. The program is at the Historic St. Mary's Mission Chapel. The presentation is free and open to the public. Funding for the Montana Conversations program is provided by Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Montana’s Cultural Trust, and private donations.
American Indian peoples have lived and thrived in Montana since the close of the last great Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago. Their ancient presence here is widely appreciated but the archaeological details of their long Indigenous histories are less well known, partly due to the pace of recent statewide research. This program takes participants on a journey through time, climate, landscapes, technologies and cultures, beginning with the First Americans who followed mammoths to North America. The conversation focuses on representative archaeological sites in Montana—habitations and villages, animal kill sites, stone quarries, rock art and battlefields-- spanning 13,500 years, culminating with cultural landscapes and preservation issues that continue to be highly important to Indian peoples today.