According to John Sorenson, the phrasing of 4 Nephi 1:1 ("the disciples of Jesus had formed a church of Christ in all the lands round about") suggests that we ought to be able to detect new religious practices in the Mesoamerican materials around the mid-first century A.D. And we can.
A shift in ritual equipment and practices is seen at about the time of Christ. Some old practices quite suddenly were given up. Certain old incense burners went out of use or changed form, and the use of the little clay figurins,which probably had some sort of religious significance, was abandoned in many places. Both those features, the burners and the figurines, had parallels in Palestine, where they represented religious practices either of a folk nature or connected with Mosaic orthodoxy. It is logical that some of Lehi's people brought knowledge of these features and adapted preexisting Mesoamerican forms of them to their purpose. These would have continued for centuries, at least among the folk. These artifacts may have had to do with the official Nephite rites under "the law of Moses" (Alma 30:3), or perhaps not. In any case they were so entrenched both in Mesoamerica and in the Near East that people hardly have given up such customs except under the impact of powerfully felt beliefs such as were incorporated in "the church of Christ."
Another shift in religious practice at the same time was giving up the carving of dated stone monuments. This practice had just built up momentum; examples known at Chiapa de Corzo, San Isidro Piedra Parada, Tres Zapotes, and El Baul had started near 35 B.C. The series ends with one whose date is either A.D. 36 or 16 (the reading is unclear). Then nothing new occurs for many years. This "enigmatic gap in dated monuments" seems to have begun at about the time when many earlier carved stones were battered and some intentionally buried, as if a religious revolution of some sort had taken place. At Chalchuapa, El Salvador, one of these inscribed monuments was said to be smashed in a "ritual of destruction" at the moment of the great volcanic eruption near the time of Christ. Its fragments are covered by the ash fall. Among the sites where vigorous monument smashing is in evidence are Kaminaljuyu/Nephi and Chiapa de Corzo/Sidom. The Book of Mormon provides a possible explanation for this behavior. It could have been a reaction by the enthusiastic new church against the old worship under the law of Moses or against cults of "idols" (Helaman 6:31). Of course other explanations are possible. [John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, pp. 330-331]