From discard to divination: Demarcating the sacred through the collection and curation of discarded objects

The artifact assemblage recovered in a sealed undisturbed context inside a ceremonial building (Structure 12) in the ancient village of Joya de Ceren (A.D. 600), a Classic Period site located on the Southeast Maya Periphery, has been particularly enigmatic and difficult to interpret. This assemblage consists of small portable worn objects, some of which show physical and c hemical damage consistent with having been previously discarded prior to be ing carefully curated in a ceremonial building, suggesting that they were c ollected in antiquity. A review of the ethnographic literature reveals that contemporary Maya ritual practitioners routinely collect small portable ob jects, many of which are Pre-Columbian in origin, as personal sacra. This p ractice of "ritual collecting" serves multiple purposes including: 1) the a cquisition of divining tools, 2) personal verification of divine election, and 3) evidence to one's community of supernatural sanction for a change in social status. Through engaging in this practice, social actors create and manipulate power in local ritual systems that exist outside of the control of contemporary institutionalized religions. It is suggested that collecti ng may represent an alternative avenue to supernatural power for past, as w ell as present-day, rural ritual practitioners.