Wealth inequality, social stratification, and the built environment in Late Prehispanic Highland Mexico: A comparative analysis with special emphasis on Tlaxcallan

•Late Prehispanic Highland Mexican test cases.•Test of correlation of inequality, stratification, and centralization.•Traditional oppression and co-option theories inadequate to explain variation.•Tlaxcallan presents low inequality, limited stratification, and high centralization.•Collective Action Theory helps explain variation in complex societies. Beginning in the last century, archaeologists became interested in the development of social complexity. Since that time, the basic concept of states and complex societies has been defined by rigid social stratification, extreme wealth inequality, and political centralization. However, recently, landscape approaches, household archaeology, city-states, and “alternative pathways to complexity” have begun to make inroads in developing a more robust approach to premodern states. Specifically, anthropological theory has advanced significantly with the incorporation of Collective Action, yet theoretical and empirically based studies of wealth inequality, social stratification, and the built environment in the archaeological literature are still limited. Therefore, in this paper, we seek to test the traditional definition of the state and complex societies using cases from Middle-Late Postclassic Highland Mexico (Central Mexico and Oaxaca), especially the case of Tlaxcallan. Using a comparative approach, we find that a stark division between public and private architecture and a compression of wealth inequality and social stratification, especially the absence of palaces, and a comparatively high degree of political centralization, marked the Tlaxcaltecan state. Accordingly, we conclude that theoretical approaches in archaeology must incorporate Collective Action Theory or other comparable approaches to effectively deal with real empirical variation in the past.