In several Pre-Columbian cultures, both in Mexico and South America, It was a common practice to "kill" a shaman's personal artifacts to allow the imprisoned spirits to be freed to either accompany the shaman in his continuing journey (after death) or to just allow the spirits their freedom.
A third possibility exists in that they wanted to be sure that someone else was not able to appropriate the "power objects" for his own use.
Since a great many of these objects were ceramic, they were just broken and the pieces interred with the dead. It seems that these pieces were intentionally as other completely intact ceramics were found in the same grave site.
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