Abstract
Medicine Wheels are unexplained aboriginal boulder configurations found primarily on hilltops and river valley vistas across the northwest Great Plains of North America. Their varied, complex designs have inspired diverse hypotheses concerning their meaning and purpose, including astronomical ones. While initial “observatory” speculations were unfounded, and quests to “decode” these structures remain unfulfilled and possibly misguided, the Medicine Wheels nevertheless represent a uniquely worthwhile case study in archaeoastronomical theory and method. In addition, emerging technologies for data acquisition and analysis pertinent to Medicine Wheels offer prospectively important new sight lines for the future of archaeoastronomy.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank a host of contributors in multiple states and provinces for help with the activation of the current research program, and particularly Nathan Friesen, Senior Archaeologist with the Government of Saskatchewan, a very welcome collaborator.
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Vogt, D. (2015). Medicine Wheels of the Great Plains. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_41
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