Description

Direct acquisition by the end user entails high mobility and multiethnic access to the Chivay source. In this model, those traveling to the source would procure only sufficient obsidian for their household or community needs and no more. The evidence of procurement at the source would be the direct impacts of communities of consumers where obsidian was perhaps circulated in a context of generalized reciprocity but specifically not exchanged against goods in truequebarter, as that is a different type of procurement. Thus, this category consists of direct, personal visits by the immediate consuming household throughout prehistory.

Table 3-12. Models of procurement and exchange for Chivay obsidian. Compare terms with those used in Figure 2-2 and Figure 3-3.

Based on low population densities during the Early Holocene it is assumed that the earliest regional consumers of Chivay obsidian in the south-central Andes, the residents of Asana circa 9400 BP, acquired obsidian directly. Direct household acquisition of resources, such as salt procurement, persists to this day in a few places in the Andean highlands. It is possible that the multi-ethnic nature of access to Andean salt mines may serve as a model for procurement that occurred at Chivay during much of prehistory.

As it is generally the altiplano pastoralists that possess the major means of transport, llama pack animals, and direct household procurement by such groups was perhaps common for many types of goods. For example, herders from the community of Paratía (Flores Ochoa 1968: 87-109), to the north-west of Juliaca in the department of Puno, made regular trips to the Colca valley to acquire agricultural goods. If Paratíans traveled directly, it is likely that they used the Quebrada Escalera route passing to the north of Nevado Huarancante which would pass only a few kilometers from the Maymeja area of the Chivay source. On the return voyage from the Colca, if llamas were not overly burdened, a special stop could have been made to acquire a few nodules of obsidian. Similarly, the household-organized llama caravans described by Nielsen (2001) could well have obtained lithic raw material for household consumption if their travel route passed adjacent to a scarce raw material source on a return journey.

This mode of transport requires that consuming households had the social and physical means to travel to the obsidian source. The ability to partake in regional transport, even in a logistical fashion described by Flores Ochoa and by Nielsen, required strong animals, the food security to undergo a risky journey, peaceful conditions and personal security on the isolated travel routes, probable social relationships or contracts with communities encountered along the way, and knowledge of the extraction source area. Conditions of multiethnic access were likely variable in prehistory and knowledge of travel routes and sources of raw material were best obtained through cordial relations with local groups. In short, this means of obsidian distribution requires relatively cosmopolitan travelers with the resources to personally visit the sources of goods needed by the household. This mode of transport is relatively inefficient because individual households or communities sharing resources, by definition, have to personally acquire and produce obsidian in this model of obsidian procurement.

Material Expectations

In the immediate vicinity of the obsidian source archaeological evidence of the direct acquisition mode would produce high variability in procurement, but relatively small quantities in production because consumption would be limited to the households of those visiting the source. Greater amounts of advanced reduction evidence, including bifacial thinning flakes and tools, broken and discarded during manufacture, will be in evidence at the source area. This type of procurement would have the greatest chance of resulting in diagnostic projectile points in the area as advanced reduction and potential discard in the area of the source is expected. When temporal control is available, primarily from datable organic material in excavated contexts, direct acquisition should result in irregular visits to the source area based on household need. In excavation units cultural material will likely be low-density, as soil and perhaps ash from adjacent active volcanoes will have time to accumulate as visitation rates are low.

There is some chance that undecorated, non-local pottery might be found in association with quarrying or with adjacent rest area bofedal zones. For example, Formative Period ceramics from the southern Lake Titicaca are typically fiber tempered, but in the north basin and in the Colca they are grit tempered. Evidence of fiber tempered plainware may have resulted from discard during direct access procurement by southern Titicaca Basin visitors. Other temper and paste characteristics may serve to identify non-local pottery. Alternately, non-local pottery may result from reciprocation activities (i.e., the Down-the-line model), but the notion here is that non-decorated, utilitarian pottery may have been too crude to have served as barter goods.