About Waldo Rudolph Wedel
Waldo Rudolph Wedel was an American archaeologist and a central figure in the study of the prehistory of the Great Plains. He was born in Newton, Kansas to a family of Mennonites. In 1936 Wedel was the first person to receive a Ph.D. in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology from Berkeley. In 1934, he published his first report on the Medicine Creek site, under Nebraska State Historical Society archaeologist A. This approach in archaeology focused on identifying cultural links between modern native groups with complexes found in the material record. Wedel explains his project: "Here the task becomes one of linking the archaeological record with the documentary, of correlating late material culture complexes with the various tribal units known or thought to have inhabited certain localities".
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