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).