Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa Shattered: Object fragmentation and social enchainment in the eastern Maya lowlands Shawn G. Morton a, ⁎ , Jaime J. Awe b , David M. Pendergast c a Arts and Education Department, Grande Prairie Regional College, 10726 106 Avenue, Grande Prairie, AB T8V 4C4, Canada b Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, 5 E. McConnell Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5200, USA c Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Maya Mesoamerica Fragmentation Enchainment Social network Ritual ABSTRACT Archaeologists are often confronted with broken objects, and the recovery of only part of an object therefore rarely causes us to question why we have not recovered more. But what if this is a mistake? What if, in ignoring this question, we are failing to consider the socio-cultural role that the fragments themselves may have played? In this paper we address these questions, outlining a particular pattern of intentional breakage and the sub- sequent distribution of the resulting fragments across multiple distinct locales/individuals. We align our dis- cussion with the related concepts of fragmentation and enchainment and apply these to a dataset derived from study of the ancient Maya of Belize. Contexts discussed in this paper are of a decidedly ritual nature, including deep caves, tombs and burials, caches, and other deposits. We suggest that we have been remiss in treating such contexts in isolation, and that the scale of ritual studies within the Maya area needs to be expanded from those focused on individual deposits to broad analyses on the landscape or regional scale. Such studies must explicitly seek out variability within this corpus as it is clear that even small sites may have served as important nodes within larger networks. 1. Introduction Save in the most exceptional of circumstances, the material rem- nants of the past consist of fragments—ceramic sherds, lithic debitage, tattered textiles, and collapsed architecture. The archaeological record is still more fragmentary, the end product of sampling strategies that at best provide a small window on the past. It would be a remarkable occurrence were we to recover a wholly reconstructable pot from a half- excavated sheet midden, construction cell, or the like, and recovery of only part of an object therefore rarely causes us to question why we have not recovered more. We are trained to look beyond these frag- ments, to see the whole objects from which they are derived, and to construct object biographies that, in turn, serve to illuminate the lives of those who made, exchanged, used, and ultimately discarded our objects of study. To borrow from a common idiom, our training typi- cally ensures that we rarely fail to see the pot for the sherds. But what if this is a mistake? What if, in focusing on fragments as the remnants of a whole object, we fail to consider the socio-cultural role that the frag- ments themselves may have played? In this paper, we consider a par- ticular pattern of material use and deposition, that is, the intentional breakage of objects and the distribution of the resulting fragments among several distinct locales/individuals. We introduce this concept and address its past formulations through its novel application to a dataset derived from the socio-political context of the ancient Maya of Belize. Although this pattern of fragment deposition, and its associated implications, has rarely been discussed in the Maya context (cf. DeLance, 2016; Lucero, 2008; Tsukamoto, 2017), it has been noted frequently and informally. In comparison, its practice among Europe’s frst farmers, animal breeders, and settlers (c. 7000–700 BCE) has been well demonstrated and widely discussed (e.g., Brück, 2004, 2006; Chapman, 2000, 2008; Harris, 2009; Jones, 2005). In the European context, it has been noted that both special and mundane objects (though analyses tend to focus on the special) were exchanged, accu- mulated, broken, and intentionally deposited in sometimes widely se- parated locations and specialised contexts. Signifcantly, the suggestion is that this pattern of deposition explicitly served to create, maintain, and alter social relationships. This pattern is typically expressed and discussed as two inter-related material and social processes termed ‘fragmentation’ and ‘enchainment’ (Chapman, 2000; cf. Brittain and Harris, 2010). Although both fragmentation and enchainment fnd homographs in sociological theory (wholly unrelated to their https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101108 Received 29 April 2019; Received in revised form 28 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: smorton@gprc.ab.ca (S.G. Morton), jaime.awe@nau.edu (J.J. Awe), d.pendergast@ucl.ac.uk (D.M. Pendergast). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 56 (2019) 101108 0278-4165/ Crown Copyright © 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T