The 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.

Long-distance exchange of exotic preciosities, while it can occur in any sociopolitical context, may be associated with both chiefly formation and state hegemony. In the south central Andes, shared stylistic elements in early complex societies of Paracas-Nasca on the Peruvian south coast and Pukara in the altiplano suggest their contact via intermediate areas. Unfortunately, interpretations of the interaction of these great traditions tend to neglect indigenous sociopolitical development in regions between the two culture areas. Recent systematic survey in one such intermediate region, Peru's Moquegua Valley, has shed light on an indigenous pre-Tiwanaku culture with distinctive regional settlement patterns, complex mortuary practices, and a local ceramic tradition known as Huaracane (385 cal B. C-cal A. D. 340). Surface collections and test excavations confirm a minimal presence of exotic Pukara and Paracas-Nasca ceramics and textiles in association with elite local residential contexts and a late Huaracane mortuary tradition known as “boot tombs” that appears after 170 cal B. C. As there is no general emulation of foreign styles, domestic activities, or practices, an agency-oriented local perspective is favored over globalist colonial or clientage models to explain the role of exotica in a climate of competitive sociopolitical development.

One of the most enigmatic aspects of decapitation practices among south coastal Peruvian Paracas and Nasca cultures (900 B.C.-A.D. 750) is the near absence of headless bodies in the archaeological record. Drawing on a case study of an Early Nasca, Phase 3 headless burial at Site PV62D13 in the lower Ica Valley, together with examples of headless interments reported in the literature, I examine the nature and disposition of headless burials. Three burial patterns, or forms, are proposed. The burial at PV62D13 is distinguished for its extended posture and interment in a non-cemetery setting and is proposed to be a dedicatory burial. Burial forms for disembodied heads are also examined, and over time, a notable increase in cached heads, buried without grave offerings is observed. Painted ceramic images of Nasca trophy heads and headless bodies are reviewed diachronically and a marked increase in decapitation scenes is noted for Late Nasca. Attention is drawn to the limited number of headless body images overall, and possible solutions to reconcile the visual imagery with the archaeological data are offered.

Iconographic studies often provide evidence to interpret ritual activities of archaeologically known cultures. Recent excavations at the site of Conchopata near Ayacucho, Peru, led to a re-analysis of the ritual behavior of Middle Horizon (A. D. 750-1000) Wari society. The identification of a hallucinogenic plant design, Anadenanthera colubrina, depicted on Conchopata offering pottery contributes a crucial understanding of a previously unknown artistic icon. This icon was discerned as depicted in various abstract renditions on Middle Horizon textiles, snuff paraphernalia, ceramics, and stone sculpture, including the Gate of the Sun at Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Based on historic and ethnographic evidence, the plant's prehistoric use as a hallucinogen is discussed with regard to suggested chicha drinking ceremonies, and the transitional role of Wari leaders from shamans to priests.

It is known that the grid pattern characterizing the city layout of Teotihuacan incorporates two slightly different groups of alignments, skewed approximately 15.5° and 16.5° clockwise from cardinal directions. I argue that these alignments were dictated by deliberate and astronomically functional orientations of the Pyramid of the Sun and the Ciudadela. The two structures recorded sunrises and sunsets on two different sets of dates, allowing the use of an observational calendar composed of intervals that included multiples of 20 days and a 260-day period. The evidence presented suggests also that the location of the Sun Pyramid was not determined by the cave that is now underneath the structure and is probably human-made, but rather by a combination of astronomical and topographic criteria: the place allowed the temple built there to be oriented both to sunrises and sunsets on significant dates and, in the perpendicular direction, to Cerro Gordo to the north; furthermore, sunrises on the so-called quarter-days of the year could be observed from the same spot over a prominent mountain on the eastern horizon. The dates corresponding to the Teotihuacan alignments are attested also at other central Mexican archaeological sites and must have been employed, primarily, for scheduling agricultural and associated ritual activities in the yearly cycle.