Ancient political systems – especially those, such as the Olmec or Chavín de Huántar, that elude definition in terms of ‘chiefdoms’ and ‘states’ – can often be understood better in terms of how they developed one axis of social power to an extraordinary degree (e.g. charismatic political contests and spectacles in the Olmec case, or control of esoteric knowledge in Chavín). These are what we termed ‘first-order regimes’. Where two axes of power were developed and formalized into a single system of domination we can begin to talk of ‘second-order regimes’. The architects of Egypt’s Old Kingdom,
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