Exploring New Frontiers in Human Heritage
The theme for 'CAA2006 Fargo' reflects both the general aims of the conference and the uniqueness of its place. The United States is celebrating the bicentennial of the journey of exploration undertaken by Merewether Lewis and William Clark from 1804 through 1806. Lewis and Clark led the "Corps of Discovery" up the Missouri River, through the Dakotas, westward to the Pacific Ocean, and back again.

The territory was, of course, already occupied by numerous tribes of Native American Indians, whose ancestors had explored those same lands many millennia earlier. The exploration of new frontiers is a hallmark of the human experience; it is what has pushed humans to spread throughout the world.

It is, then, a human theme, the exploration of frontiers and resultant discoveries that change our understanding of the world: in ages past, frontiers of land, today frontiers of knowledge. For the new exploration of new frontiers, we need new methods for discovery, and today those methods are preeminently digital. And so, we arrive at our theme: Digital Discovery: Exploring New Frontiers in Human Heritage.