Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel

The Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel is an archaeological site of the Blackfoot Nation located south of Bassano, Alberta [1]. The medicine wheel sits on top of a grassy hill at an elevation of 918 m overlooking a large area of undisturbed prairie around the Bow River [1]. The structure consists of a round stone cairn, 9 m in diameter, surrounded by a 27 m wide cobble circle connected to the cairn by 28 stone spokes [1]. This arrangement is categorized as Subgroup 6 and of the total 67 known medicine wheels only 3 belong to this category [1]. The site was built in layers, with the earliest C14 date from the cairn determined at 3845 ± 85 radiocarbon years before present [1]. Rocks and arrowheads were added to it until contact with Europeans, although there was a gap in its use between 3000 and 2000 years ago [1]. The site further yielded iniskim stones ("buffalo calling stones"), fragments of ammonite fossils that can be found in the bedrock exposed by the Bow River to the east of the site [1].