The transport of obsidian from both the Chivay and Alca sources fluctuated during the Archaic Foragers period, and the distribution remained confined to the sierra and altiplano areas of the south-central Andes. The small and irregular quantities of obsidian consumed throughout the region could have been procured and transported by mobile foragers, or conveyed through down-the-line exchange networks. Conceivably exchange could have taken place a seasonal gatherings as well, based on analogy from other foraging groups worldwide, although there is no direct empirical support for such gatherings in the south-central Andean Archaic. At Asana, the most well-stratified highland Archaic site investigated to date, evidence of non-local obsidian was intermittent and consisted of very small quantities of material in a pattern that is perhaps exemplary of the discontinuous nature of regional exchange during this time.
Obsidian from the Quispisisa source (340 linear km to the north-west of the Chivay source), was likewise used primarily in highland contexts during the Archaic Foragers period, particularly in rock shelters excavated by MacNeish and colleagues in the central highlands. While Quispisisa material was circulated at a number of preceramic coastal sites(Burger and Asaro 1978), current evidence suggests that those contexts post-date 3300 cal BCE (i.e., cotton preceramic) and are therefore Terminal Archaic in the terms used here. It appears that while Quispisisa material was used widely on the coasts subsequent to the Archaic Foragers period, material from Chivay and Alca were virtually always confined in the highlands with the exception of the earliest obsidian evidence of all: Alca at Quebrada Jaguay. In the Archaic Foragers period, as in later periods, the evidence from obsidian is contrary to the widely-discussed Andean vertical complementarity models, because obsidian distributions suggest that the movement of people or products between ecologically complementary zones was not widespread.