UC San Diego

Recent archaeological explorations elsewhere in the northern Maya lowlands have provided enough evidence to state that social complexity emerged in this region as early as the second half of the Middle Preclassic period (approximately 1000-400/300BC). This has reformulated our understanding about northern Maya lowlands that had been considered as a peripheral place regard as the emergence of sociopolitical organization. Nowadays, the debate is concerned about the nature and level of sociopolitical organization of societies in northern Maya lowlands. That is whether they were at the level of chiefdom or state. I approach this problematic from the analysis of a public building, which I consider as embodying and expressing asymmetrical social relations. That is it is identified as architecture of power. A public building, Structure 1714, provides the means to test the models of political organization. Structure 1714 is located at Xamán Susulá, a middle-rank site in the three-tiered settlement pattern hierarchy of northwestern Yucatán, México. This building is the most largest and impressive of the site. It is characterized by the presence of the earliest throne reported in the entire Maya lowlands. The analysis of Structure 1714, in conjunction with the plan of the site and the regional settlement pattern, indicates that Xamán Susulá was organized at the level of chiefdom. Most importantly, I state that this society was an individualizing chiefdom that employed an exclusionary or network strategy of political integration