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Wheels of Time: The Middle Archaic and the Medicine Wheels of the Great Plains - Plains 09
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In this episode of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast, host Carlton Shield Chief Gover delves into the fascinating Middle Archaic period through the lens of some of its most enigmatic features: medicine wheels and cairns. Carlton explores the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, the Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel in Alberta, and the British Block Cairn and Medicine Wheel in Saskatchewan. These remarkable structures, rich with cultural and spiritual significance, offer a glimpse into the lifeways and belief systems of the Middle Archaic peoples.
Links:
- The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
- Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
- Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/great-plains-archaeology/09
Contact:
- Instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Email: [email protected]
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Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. Join me as we uncover the rich histories of North America's Great Plains, exploring the latest archaeological discoveries and past cultures that shaped this storied region. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Carlton Schiele, Chief Gover, and I am thrilled to have you join me on this exciting journey through the rich and fascinating histories of North America's Great
Early Archaic Period in the Great Plains
00:00:35
Speaker
Plains. So today, we're staying in the archaic period. Last episode, we were talking about the early archaic, you know, in the archaic period within this chronological framework in the Great Plains.
00:00:46
Speaker
roughly starting 7,200 B.C. and then roughly 500 B.C. with that caveat that archaic or paleo-Indian life ways of hunting and gathering, especially in the western part of the plains, the the Rocky Mountain periphery, the high plains, Canada, stays the same. And that's that theme through the Great Plains in general. All the cultural and subsistence practices and changes we're really seeing in the east along with Missouri River Basin, along with river basins in general, the high plains, right that is bison hunting ground. It doesn't it has low vegetation density. but Seasonality is not as does not have the breadth that it does in the east. right The eastern part of the plains has a longer growing season. There's much more dense vegetation production. right So keeping that theme and keeping that in mind, the archaic period and
00:01:44
Speaker
7200 B.C. to 500 B.C. We talked to about the early archaic period in episode eight, really kind of talking about like, hey, there's some intensification of landscapes. People are building bison drives, they're modifying the environments, rather they're doing you know repeated use, we're starting to see boundaries. And I kept alluding to, in that last episode, something I really wanted to talk about.
Medicine Wheels: Ceremonial Structures
00:02:10
Speaker
And that is moving away from looking at Indigenous people in the past in the Great Plains at this period as like just on their hunting practices, I wanted to get into more ceremonialism, or what we think of as ceremonialism. and That really starts to begin in the middle our kick.
00:02:32
Speaker
The middle Archaic is roughly between 3800 BC and 1200 BC. okay so And one, possibly one of the earliest forms of ceremonial structures that we see in the Great Plains is the medicine wheel. So hopefully this is ringing some bells for some people, like the medicine wheel, what are we talking about? So the medicine wheel, specifically the Bighorn medicine wheel in Wyoming, it is possibly middle archaic. And the reason that we're saying possibly right, medicine wheels, specifically the one in the Bighorn medicine wheel, is made out of limestone.
00:03:19
Speaker
You can't radiocarbon date limestone, right? There's no organic material within a rock to date. Where we're getting this possible middle archaic point is that some of the projectile points that are found in association with the medicine wheel are from the middle archaic period.
00:03:43
Speaker
So we're using a relative dating technique of artifact seriation to identify the possible depth and time that the medicine wheel was constructed. Where are we talking about? So the Bighorn Medicine Wheel was located in the Bighorn National Forest on the western peak of Medicine Mountain at an elevation of roughly 9,600 feet in the Bighorn Range, which is east of Lovell, Wyoming.
00:04:09
Speaker
And this medicine wheel, it's not small by any stretch of the imagination. It is 70 feet in 75 feet in diameter. So from one end of the wheel to the other, 75 feet. And it has ah over. Over two dozen, 28.
00:04:28
Speaker
radial spokes. So you have, and I'm doing this for those watching on YouTube and making a circle, for those listening in their car or at home and not watching me on YouTube and making a circle with my hands, there's the larger outer wheel, there's an inner wheel slash cairn, and there's 28 spokes coming out of it. Now, why are people making this? These medicine wheels are not for hunting. You don't create these to trap bison, right? They're not like creating the bison drives, the bison lanes, developing corrals. This is very much separate from purely subsistence. Now we can go on and on about what could it mean? And that that's very much
00:05:19
Speaker
looking at the meaning and symbolism of the medicine wheels. I don't want to get into that because like there's no, I just want to talk about the archeology. What is the physical evidence and how, how do we see this? And what does it mean? From a labor perspective, this is taking time and energy to create, right? Without a output or an expected return on calories. right If we were to look at this from purely as you human beings, as a biological organism, we have only a couple of missions in life. that is to Number one is to recreate and procreate. and The way we do that is by consuming energy until that occurs. Medicine wheels are different. and This medicine wheel was used there's over
00:06:08
Speaker
This isn't the only medicine wheel.
Cultural Significance of Medicine Wheels
00:06:10
Speaker
There's between 70 and 150 that we know about between Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan. This is very much a Northwestern Plains cultural phenomena that goes across time and space. Medicine wheels, the earliest ones seem to be showing up in the middle archaic, but they are used well into the 1800s AD. These places are continuously reused.
00:06:40
Speaker
throughout thousands of years. They have significance to the indigenous populations that once had homelands, that still have homelands in those areas, and even immigrant tribes coming in. They were places of special significance. Now, of course, there's maybe some archaeoastronomy going in there, with archaeoastronomy being like how the archaeological record will you know works with astronomical alignments. You make any line in the ground, it's going to have some sort of astronomical alignment to it. So I don't want to get too much into the arc of astronomy, but really looking at that that investment of of space outside of just caloric return, this is different, right? This in the archaeological record and in the Great Plains is a first.
00:07:31
Speaker
In the Paleoindian period, with peopling, we're really looking at stone tools and bones that have things have been hunted. you know Up until this point, the archaeological record is subsistence. It is bison hunting, but elephant killing and butchering.
00:07:47
Speaker
Now we are seeing features, an archeological feature, a feature being something that you cannot pick up with your hand. So a house is ah is a feature, a door knob would be an artifact, right? An artifact in the archeological sense is something you can pick up with your hand, right? So we're starting to see features on the landscape. And I know I'm like just repeating myself at this point, this can't be moved and this is not,
00:08:11
Speaker
For hunting, this is different. And so what does that mean? And we're continuing on those themes of, from last episode about the early archaic, investment into place. That this is, these medicine wheels are reused over time. People or a person, like they claim this, this is theirs. So we're seeing really,
00:08:39
Speaker
I don't want to say like borders being drawn, but we're starting to see like cultural
Cultural Shifts in the Middle Archaic Period
00:08:45
Speaker
specialization in the Northwest Plains, right? You don't find medicine wheels in other places. but you know Part of that is geography. Where do you have limestone? Medicine wheels are at high elevation. What's going on? And so we're seeing the presence and introduction of ah of a culture in the Northwest Plains.
00:09:05
Speaker
And so the middle archaic things are starting to get fun. You know, this is, and the middle archaic in general, right? The bison sin megafauna are gone. This is the time of bison. This is, uh, we're starting to see here with these medicine wheels, the possibility of regional, socially distinct populations.
00:09:31
Speaker
right Once again, people aren't you know pots and points aren't people, but things like medicine wheels, these features that are specific to a geographic area where we can see overlap with some projectile point typologies, we can start making these arguments like, hey, there's a group of people up here that are creating medicine wheels for their own reasons that we're not seeing in Texas. We're not seeing in Kansas. This is special.
00:09:56
Speaker
And so this ties into conversations over, you know, what are the antiquity of populations and places and when tribes from those areas, like in Little Bighorn, the Crow, the Shoshone,
00:10:08
Speaker
It can be like, we've always been here where people have always used those medicine wheels. We can start seeing those arguments take shape. right so This isn't like some lost, what were medicine wheels used for? Like I said earlier, tribes, indigenous nations, the Senate communities from these areas have deep ties to those medicine wheels in their culture. We can start seeing these vestiges of identity appear beyond right the bison kills.
00:10:36
Speaker
So that's why I really find the middle archaic to be interesting because we have moved beyond just the hunter gatherer kill count archeology and we're starting to see some more cooler stuff.
00:10:49
Speaker
But it's not just medicine wheels. right I said there's between 75 and 120 or something like that, medicine wheels on on the Great Plains, the Northwest Plains, 70 and 150, sorry, I lowballed it there, between 70 and 150.
00:11:06
Speaker
They're significant. and you know You can Google the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, and it will pop up archaeoastronomy, that the spokes align to the solstices or other things, and that's just kind of going to happen. and I'm not going to make the determination that they are or not. right That's not for me to decide.
00:11:24
Speaker
You know, some websites will be like, oh, there's 28 spokes, which is the same number of Lakotas built Sundance Lodges. And it's like, you know, Lakotas are one second land of rifles to the Great Plains. Let's not go that far. But even today, there's prayer offerings that are often left at medicine wheels, both at Bighorn and other places. It is a huge deal.
00:11:43
Speaker
So, we start seeing those, I think they're really cool. We can date the one at Bighorn to possibly middle archaic because of the presence of some projectile points that are directly associated with the medicine wheel. And really, like I said, we can start seeing the possibility for regionally distinct social populations.
00:12:04
Speaker
with very distinct cultures. I'm going to be right back with segment two. We're going to continue on this conversation, looking at other parts of the plains where we're seeing other forms of investment of the landscape beyond just the hunting gathering.
British Block Cairn and Middle Archaic Sites
00:12:19
Speaker
and we're back, talking about medicine wheels. So another one that I want to talk about real quick is the Majorville Cairn in medicine wheel. This one is in Canada, specifically, I think it's Alberta. Yeah, in Vulcan County, Alberta. um This one is also dated to the middle archaic based on the presence of both Oxbow and McKeon points, but there seems to be like no late archaic artifacts associated with it, and and the artifacts are found to the central cairn. so In the center of the ring here, there's a major cairn that's larger than the one at the Bighorn medicine wheel. The cairn being this pile of rocks. and Once again, 28 spokes, very similar ah to to the Bighorn. It's also rather large. The central cairn itself in the center of the medicine wheel, the diameter of that
00:13:07
Speaker
is 27 feet, which is then connected to a 27-meter cobble circle with 28 spokes. So 27 times 3 is roughly 81 feet in diameter for those who do their measurements and in freedom. This is one of those, right, I talked about there's upwards of 150 medicine wheels. This one's in Alberta, very similar once again, dated to the middle archaic based on the presence of projectile points that are found there.
00:13:36
Speaker
This one has been used for ritual and ceremonial purposes by the Blackfeet in time and Moriam. Same with Bighorn Medicine Wheel, right? People are still going up there doing offerings. They're still doing ceremonial practices near nearby. We're seeing very similar cultural practices occurring. Like the Middle Archaic, like I said, it's over a couple thousand years. When within the Middle Archaic, who knows? we can't accurately radiocarbonate these things, as I said in the first segment. But moving just beyond medicine wheels, I want to take a look at what's called British Block Caron and its associated medicine wheel.
00:14:24
Speaker
there's this regional pattern that we're trying to talk about here in the middle middle archaic that's kind of talking to the possibility of these discrete social units and in cultural practices. So there's clusters at British block and British block Karen also in Alberta. This is in Sufield block, Alberta um in Cypress County, Alberta. Now here there's, this is another middle archaic place. And the reason being there's only McKeon points found here. Oxbow and McKeon, those points, these are projectile point typologies. Oxbow points are ah found in in a tight cluster in North Dakota, Northern South Dakota, South Eastern Alberta,
00:15:10
Speaker
where McKeon points are found in Northern Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and southwest Alberta. But there's overlap between McKeon and the Oxbow points in south central Alberta and along the Montana-North Dakota border. And so here in Alberta, but we're seeing a British Bloc Cairn just McKeon points. And there are clusters of three to five teepee rings here. So these aren't probably the teepees that we think of in terms of the large lodges. This is before horses. So these teepee poles or whatever structures are being probably carried by dogs. But also here, there's this medicine wheel that doesn't have spokes
00:16:00
Speaker
But there is a human effigy, like there's a person made of stone that's about like three and a half, four meters.
Social Units and Cultural Practices in the Northwest Plains
00:16:14
Speaker
tall by two to three meters wide. It's different, right? There's a wheel there. You can see a wheel made out of the rocks, possibly with a cairn in the middle, but there's this person sitting in the southeast portion of it. What the hell does that mean? So this is this is different. And even though you know we we can get it to Mill Archaic because of the presence of these McKeon points, whereas the other one we talked about, there's both Oxbow and McKeon points present.
00:16:49
Speaker
But the person just makes it so different. like yeah You can talk about the alignments with the spokes of the other medicine wheels, right? What is a human effigy doing here? That is different. That sticks out. That is something that's being investigated. But also, once again, this is a site that was used later in time, too. So we know that we can assume, based on the presence of those Bekean points,
00:17:13
Speaker
middle archaic, but there's also, associated with the site, more modern or closely closer into time to us, projectile points as well at the presence of pottery. We haven't hit pottery yet. right we're still just This is pre-pottery, so this is different.
00:17:32
Speaker
and this is the differences that make the middle archaic interesting. right and so Just to wrap this up, we're just hit three fun sites, talking about medicine wheels, talking about investment of the landscape, moving these stone blocks around to create these features on the landscape that are not associated with hunting, but clearly, you know most likely, some ceremonial context. right We can look at the ethnographic record,
00:17:55
Speaker
These sites were used for ritual and ceremonial purposes. Closer to us, we can you know reasonably assume in the past, too. Also, who knows?
Importance of Middle Archaic Ceremonial Sites
00:18:04
Speaker
These places are just significant, and that's why I wanted to take the time. This is what makes the Middle Archaic pop in terms of archaeological research.
00:18:15
Speaker
And we're really looking at the Northwest Plains here, right? So this is like really one of the few times outside of bison hunting that we'll talk about Northwest Plains, right, in this podcast just because of the nature of the archaeological record in the high plains, right? These practices from Paleo-Indian to Woodland to Plains Village, archaic, the great altar time, this is where people go to hunt. But something is happening in Northwest Plains where we start seeing borders of regionally distinct projectile point typologies, but now in the Northwest Plains, not only do we have like more distinct projectile point typologies, but these distinct cultural features in the presence of these medicine wheels and these cairns. This is unique. This happens in the middle archaic. With that, this is going to be a little bit of a shorter episode today.
00:19:06
Speaker
But the Middle Archaic, medicine wheels, investment in and landscape, it's just a cool time. It's woefully understudied in Great Plains archaeology. and Great Plains archaeology in general is like woefully well-understudied, but this in particular. so If you're ever out in the Northwest Plains, Wyoming, Montana, maybe even in the summer, we're recording this in December, as we think about those warm summer months and maybe taking some camping trips out to Montana, Wyoming, you know Alberta, keep your eyes out for some medicine wheel sites and go take a gander. These things are truly incredible.
00:19:43
Speaker
things to look at. They're big. They're bigger than you'd expect. I want to thank you all for listening today. I look forward to being with you guys next time.
Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode
00:19:51
Speaker
I think we'll talk about some later cake stuff. We'll talk about, let's get into Nebo Hill. That's what we're going to do. Next episode, we're going to look at Nebo Hill and the later cake and some cool things that are going on. See you guys all next time.
00:20:06
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Great Plains archaeology podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at Pawnee underscore archaeologist. And you can also email me at Great Plains Ark podcast at gmail dot.com. And remember, anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie. American author Willa Cather.
00:20:32
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Seabreck, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at ww www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.