The structure is stone laid on the ground surface, so it carries no stratigraphy and cannot be dated directly. Cairns have been added to and rebuilt by users over an unknown period, and material recovered at the site has returned a wide spread of dates. Estimates in the literature run from a few centuries to several thousand years. The builders are equally open: the Plains nations now associated with the site did not all occupy the Bighorn country at the same time, and Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone and Lakota traditions each connect the wheel to their own history.
What would resolve this A securely associated context: a buried feature or datable deposit beneath an undisturbed part of the structure, excavated with the consent of the associated nations and dated on material demonstrably contemporary with construction rather than with later use.
OpenArchaeology, working with the associated Plains nations; archaeoastronomy for the alignment claimsJohn A. Eddy, Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel