Cult and religious are archaeologist-speak for we don't see a practical purpose and have no idea. I'm going to hold on to "they buried the god-tier sheep bone gamer girl with her wins." Come to think of it, god-tier equals cult figure, maybe you can pray to her for wins

LOL at first i thought you were talking about weeb anime figurines, then remembered barbie and ken are things

Looking through an archeological lens, sheep bone games and cult practices probably look the same. Imagine thousands of years from now, they'll probably see like football fans as a cult.

If those PVC figures also loose their paint, then they will think they weren't painted in the first place. A new style of statues will emerge by the name of "neo-millenialism", who will make gray-colored anime figurines without understanding anything about anime at all.

Then a linguist finds a bunch of image files and documentation on how to read them, and reproduces them. the images will be photographs of these anime figurines. The followers of the neo-millleniallism (calling themselves gatekeepers) accuse the linguist of fabricating such images and making up such stories like their fertility goddess being actually called Super Sonico, and in true 4chan church fashion, they block a pool from access until the linguist will admit their scam. The gatekeepers instead being laughed off, with the worst of them being fined.

There's a running gag in archaeology that variations on "ritual purposes" actually means "I have no idea what this was for".

That said, there has historically been a connection between certain divination practices and games of chance, so this could easily be both.

"D'at's hawt."

Gaming is often hard to distinguish from cult behavior.