From Discard to Divination: Demarcating the Sacred Through the Collection and Curation of Discarded Objects

Abstract

AbstractThe artifact assemblage recovered in a sealed undisturbed context inside a ceremonial building (Structure 12) in the ancient village of Joya de Cerén (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 chemical damage consistent with having been previously discarded prior to being carefully curated in a ceremonial building, suggesting that they were collected in antiquity. A review of the ethnographic literature reveals that contemporary Maya ritual practitioners routinely collect small portable objects, many of which are Pre-Columbian in origin, as personal sacra. This practice of “ritual collecting” serves multiple purposes including: 1) the acquisition 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 collecting may represent an alternative avenue to supernatural power for past, as well as present-day, rural ritual practitioners.