By tracing the circulation of objects through various contexts at the Wari site of Conchopata, this work aims to illuminate how people were using material culture in ritualized practice to negotiate their place within an emerging state and city, providing a larger context for understanding processes of urbanization and Wari imperial expansion. Scholars of the Wari Empire have established that religious authority was a legitimating source of power; however, the ways in which this was enacted within existing ritual frameworks has remained under-theorized. Previous studies of Wari ritual practice have focused on its politico-religious connotations through the iconography, architecture, burial furniture, and material culture associated with elite contexts; most notably, the elaborately painted, oversized ceremonial pottery of limited circulation that was ritually destroyed and scattered in civic ceremonial architecture. Focusing on the depositional practices that produced these offering contexts rather than the ceremonial ceramic styles they contained allows us to: expand the analysis to the numerous domestic living/working spaces and contexts of plainer ceramic wares; emplace ritual activity within a broader repertoire of depositional practices; and identify linkages with "mundane" spheres of activity such as refuse disposal, ceramic production, and household maintenance. Such an approach illuminates the interplay of practices that conditioned state expressions of ritual power and the ways in which households actively used ritual practice to negotiate ongoing social relationships.