And then it turns out (or rather, we never fully figure out) that it just meant that the owner paid that time's equivalent of sales tax on the figurine. And that the "unknown site probably used for ritual purposes" was more akin to that society's DMV, and people spent a lot of time there sitting around being bored until it's their turn at the clerk's station.

I should add that I don't really think that my "sales tax" explanation is in any way more likely in that specific case, but I do wonder if we (as layman, not necessarily archeologists) tend to discard mundane theories a lot. And yet I somehow find how the mundane stuff was handled in ancient times much more interesting then any regal or religious ceremony stuff...