This dissertation presents an archaeological investigation into prehistoric Maya social and political organization. I took as a general problem the typological placement of ancient Maya society in cultural evolutionary schemes. The specific issue was whether prehistoric Yucatec Maya government was a segmentary or unitary state. To apply ethnohistorical data directly to the prehistoric problem, I chose to investigate a late prehistoric archaeological site: Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. I proposed four hypotheses relating settlement patterns and artifact style and function to social groups and the kinship system. At Mayapan, I mapped several areas of residential settlement. The settlement pattern consisted of a nested hierarchy of self-similar units. Dwellings clustered into house groups; two or more house groups sometimes clustered within a houselot; two or more houselots sometimes aggregated to create a cluster of houselots. The Mayapan settlement pattern exhibits fractal geometry: it is statistically self-similar and has a fractional dimension. The fractal settlement pattern neatly matches those models of Maya social structure, like Evon Vogt's, that propose a self-similar hierarchical nesting of social units. To collect artifact samples from different social groups, I excavated and made surface collections in three clusters of houselots and in one large houselot that contained two house groups. The style of the ceramics exhibited spatial patterning, both within and among clusters of houselots. Correspondence analysis differentiated the clusters of houselots statistically using the frequencies of ceramic varieties. Stylistic ceramic modes, like lip forms, also exhibited statistically significant variation among clusters of houselots. Analysis of the lithic artifacts suggested that economic functions and activities varied among houselots or clusters of houselots. Evaluation of the hypotheses implied that clusters of houselots represented important social groups. Ethnohistorical analysis indicated that the Yucatec Maya possessed patrilineal, patrilocal lineages that formed the basis of the political system. I found persuasive evidence for the existence of matrilines that not only helped regulate marriage patterns, but also had economic functions. The research indicated that Late Postclassic Mayapan government was more segmentary than unitary, but that those categories were inadequate to describe the variability inherent in early states.* *Originally published in DAI Vol. 60, No. 10. Reprinted here with corrected title