Chaco Outlier or Backwoods Pretender?: A Provincial Great House at Edge of the Cedars Ruin, Utah

The period of culture history termed “Pueblo II” by archaeologists (about A.D. 900-1150) witnessed cultural developments of profound and fundamental significance in the development of the so-called “Anasazi” cultures of the American Southwest. These developments, often subsumed under the term “Chacoan Phenomenon” (Irwin-Williams 1972), are archaeologically manifest in the rise of large and spectacular architectural complexes (“great houses”) in the Chaco Canyon and Aztec areas of New Mexico’s San Juan Basin and similar but generally smaller great houses or “outliers” scattered around the basin and beyond. Wherever they occur, great houses are commonly associated with surrounding communities of dispersed, smaller,