Sites 31, 33 and 35 are similar in their population and activities.  All appear to be areas of production and consumption; that is, all members of the population performed tasks for the survival and well-being of each community, with some trading of farming implements, pottery and probably fabrics between the three village sites.  Adults of both sexes farmed, but other tasks were divided along gender lines.  Women spun thread, wove cloth and sewed; a small number also wove tapestries or embroidered.  All men hunted, and a few produced stone implements.  In each village, pottery was produced by about a quarter of the households, but no evidence indicates whether the work was done by women, men or both.  The related cemetery sites, 32, 34 and 36, support the picture of uniformity.  Individuals were alike in stature and age-specific mortality, suggesting similar level s of nutrition and stress.

    The next site, 37, was most likely a production center only.  It was inhabited by about 60 men and women for 3 to 4 months in the fall.  The occupants came to make stone tools and weave, living off food produced in the farming villages of Sites 31, 33 and 35.  The evidence of discarded cloth and stone tools in the refuse associated with the site suggests that the inhabitants came from those villages.  One structure was occupied year-round, perhaps by people who acted as guards, overseers, or caretakers and did not participate in food production.  In this light, it is a reasonable assumption to make that the labor of the individuals from the villages was engaged in producing tribute payments to a ruling class, possibly overseen by a socially superior class of warriors from Site 38.
 

Residents of Site 38 did not engage in any kind of food production.  The associated cemetery, Site 39, reveals that men were buried with weapons and trophy heads—all adult males were warriors.  In addition, the stature of men at this site was greater, indicating that they enjoyed better nutrition in childhood than the men of the farming villages.  On the other hand, women interred in Site 39 were of the same stature as their counterparts in the villages.  In light of these differences, men in this community probably came from a different class, while women likely originated in the farming villages.  People at Site 38 lived longer than those in the food-producing communities, also suggesting that they generally enjoyed better health.  They used jade necklaces as a symbol of status.

    Like the inhabitants of Site 38, people at Site 40 lived entirely off of the food produced by the three farming communities and stored at Site 37.  This was a class of artisans or craftsmen who transformed many different raw materials into finished products.  Both men and women acquired and processed materials such as mineral ores, turquoise, jade, and spondylus (spiny oyster).  At Site 41, the inhabitants were buried with grave goods indicating that both men and women were potters, woodcarvers, metalsmiths, and jeweler-lapidaries, but only women made carved stone objects. Also like the occupants of Site 38, these people marked their status with necklaces, this time turquoise.  But their stature and age-specific mortality did not differ significantly from those at the farming villages (see Charts).  This class, while perhaps socially closer in status to the warrior class as indicated by the presence of the necklaces and by the fact that they consume food they do not produce without returning any items of comparable usefulness to immediate survival, nevertheless seem to lack the status or strength for enough food to be healthier than the farmer-peasants.

    Perhaps the most interesting structure is the pyramid at Site 42.  It appears that the construction of the pyramid involved the sacrifice of sixteen adolescents.  Regular or seasonal offerings of spondylus, fish and plant foods were placed in pits at each corner.  All the men buried here came from the ruling class, as shown by their greater stature.  The woman in the more recent burial shares that trait, but the woman in the earlier tomb may have come from one of the farming villages, judging by her stature and age at death.  Those with the greater stature were also buried with jade necklaces and silver pins, lending credence to the theory that they came from the ruling class.

    The structure at Site 43 was most likely the palace inhabited by members of the ruling family.  Their status is marked by the fact that they consumed on an extravagant scale, yet produced nothing.  Everything they used came from either the farming villages, Site 37 or Site 40.  In addition, the associated burial grounds at Site 44 consist of elaborate tombs, costly in terms of skilled and unskilled labor.  Most likely unskilled labor was pulled from the farming communities, while skilled artisans were enlisted from Site 40.  Overall, six million person-days of labor were reserved for the task of building the three vaults; that is, over a period of seventy-five years, the work required eight hundred individuals for one hundred days each year.

    The earlier burial contained four adults whose stature indicates that they probably came from the farming villages.  The same inference may be made about two of the women in the later vault, while the man and the eldest woman probably originated in the ruling class.  Gold and silver grave goods seem here to be exclusive to the ruling family.

    It appears that a complex social system existed with a political hierarchy and social division of labor leading to class formation.  Direct producers had the lowest social rank, indicated by their lack of luxury items and by the tribute payments they apparently had to provide to the ruling class.  Somewhat higher in the social scale were the artisans.  They did not need to produce their own food, but nevertheless lacked the means to superior nutrition.  Most likely, therefore, they were kept by the ruling family, fed from the tribute payments of the farmers to provide luxury goods. A sign of higher status was the turquoise necklaces they wore.  More power resided in the warrior class.  While not producing food, they functioned, perhaps, as a more necessary group than the artisans.  Certainly they enjoyed a more elevated status as evidenced by their greater health generally than the farmers or the artisans, and by the use of jade necklaces.  While the artisans’ relationship with the ruling family had an economic basis, that is, they were hired to perform a function for the ruling family, the warrior class seemed to have more of a social connection with the rulers.  The ruling family emerged from the warrior class, perhaps subjugating the farmers through force or by providing protection in return for tribute.  The ruling family showed their power through appropriating the labor of the farming communities and through the sacrifice of sixteen of their adolescents.  Their presence in the pyramid indicates a spiritual or religious status as well.