Exclusivity in Early Maya Monumentality: Querying Egalitarianism at Ucí, Yucatán

Abstract Datasets from around the world suggest that people completed early monumental construction projects without long-term structures of hierarchy or authority. In the Maya area, some of the first monuments produced by semisedentary societies, such as those at Yaxuna and Ceibal, were built in the absence of substantial social inequality. The focus of these monuments was a relatively inclusive plaza. This article presents evidence of an eighth-century BC monumental construction at Ucí, another site that was probably not fully sedentary. At Ucí, however, the first large architecture is not inclusive. Structure 14sub5 lacks a front stairway, separating people in the plaza from those who could ascend the building from the back. The difference between the inclusivity at Ceibal and Yaxuna and exclusivity at Ucí suggests variation in degrees of inequality. Different societies experimented creatively with social and political organization. This aligns with the inherent complexity of egalitarian societies as well as the possibility that not all complex societies began as egalitarian. Consonant with the idea that people had power to act otherwise, early exclusivity at Ucí developed into inclusive forms of governance in the Late Preclassic.