Surface Archaeology of the Red Knobs Site, a Southeastern Utah Great House

Red Knobs is a large Anasazi site in southeastern Utah. It was a community center twice—first around A.D. 900, then again in the early to mid-1100s. The later occupation incorporated some of the architectural symbolism associated with Chacoan great houses, including a great kiva and a prehistoric road. Other characteristics, including having been built on top of an earlier community center, seem symbolic but are not clearly Chacoan. Also, ceramics suggest substantial local production with economic ties strongest to the southwest rather than the southeast toward Chaco or Aztec. It appears that connections to Chaco, if any, were relatively indirect. Other southeastern Utah great houses are highly variable, but share both the Chacoan architectural symbolism and the tendency to be located on the ruins of large, late Pueblo I villages. This suggests attempts to evoke connections both to the large, distant Chacoan centers and to local precursors.