ARARA 2026 Conference

The 2026 conference will be held June 25-29 in Great Falls, Montana. The venue will be the Holiday Inn, which is about a 5-minute drive from the airport. Great Falls is serviced by United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Allegiant Air, and Alaska Airlines.

Great Falls:
Great Falls is at the confluence of the Sun and Missouri rivers and is named for a series of five waterfalls located on the Missouri River north and east of the city. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805–1806 was forced to portage around a 10-mile (16 km) stretch of the river in order to bypass the falls; the company spent 31 days in the area, performing arduous labor to make the portage. The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana are located in Great Falls.

For those Lewis and Clark aficionados, this is the location of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, which is located near their portage of the falls. This is also the home of the artist C. M. Russell, and the museum featuring his work also supports an interesting rock art boulder. Fort Benton, northeast of Great Falls, was the termination point for steamboats coming up the Missouri. The Fort was a center for trade for northern Montana and southern Alberta for more than forty years attracting all the local Indian tribes. Many of the bison robes that made their way to eastern markets from 1865 to 1882 passed through this Fort. 

Great Falls has a  population of 60,000 and is located just east of the Rocky Mountains and is bisected by the Missouri River. It is a popular tourist destination with one million overnight visitors annually and hosts 10 museums. It is 180 miles from the eastern entrance to Glacier National Park and 264 miles from Yellowstone National Park. It is on Interstate 15 in the northwest part of the state. 
Sources: Mavis Greer and Wikipedia

Photo source: Great Falls Montana Tourism

Weather:
Great Falls enjoys a pleasant summer climate. Temperatures are moderate with an average high temperature of 80 degrees and rarely exceeding 90 degrees. Overnight temperatures will drop to the mid 50s. The probability of precipitation in late June is about 25%. Source: Weatherspark.com

Accommodations:
Our conference center is the Holiday Inn with 168 sleeping rooms, high speed internet, restaurant, lounge, and an indoor heated pool, hot tub, and 48 foot waterslide. There is a restaurant at the hotel and many nearby eating establishments. The presentations, auction, vendor room, and banquet will all take place at the Holiday Inn. 
 Photo source
For those of you interested in camping, there are several campgrounds in the area including a KOA, Great Falls RV Park, and the Malmstrom AFB FamCamp near the Air Force base.

Field Trips and Other Events
Our Field Trip Committee, headed by Mavis Greer and Jim Keyser, has been preparing tours to a variety of rock art sites to accommodate all participants and most physical abilities. Many of these sites are on private land, and this conference will offer one of the few times they can be visited.

Barbara em Ende will be in charge of the vendor room. 

Jenny Huang will chair the Program Committee. If you are interested in presenting your research at the Great Falls meeting, keep an eye out for the Call for Papers on this website in January 2026.
 
Rock Art
There is a variety of rock art near Great Falls. Sites south, west, and east are dominated by pictographs that date back at least to the Archaic Period. These sites contain a variety of abstract designs known as the Foothills Abstract Tradition, which extends along the Rocky Mountain front south from Alberta through Montana and into Wyoming. Handprints are abundant among the paintings with several sites in this region only having this image. Petroglyph sites occur north and northwest of Great Falls, and they are found on sandstone cliffs as well as glacial erratic boulders. Petroglyphs in this area are generally younger than the painted sites and many of these carvings date after the arrival of the horse in this area in the early 1700s. Other carvings show V-neck warriors and shield-bearing warriors of the Late Prehistoric period. These petroglyphs often recount personal stories about a warrior-artist's warfare accomplishments, while those on boulders are more likely to be representations of bison and bear tracks. Petroglyph boulders were, and still are today, places to leave offerings. 


Photo credits: Mavis Greer, Jim Keyser, George Poetschat, and Michael Klassen

Preliminary Agenda

• Thursday June 25: Board meeting/Registration
• Friday June 26: Field trips/Reception/Registration
• Saturday June 27: Presentations/Registration
• Sunday June 28: Presentations/Banquet
• Monday June 29: Field trip