Ethnohistoric evidence suggests that elites commissioned long distance trade caravans to procure materials that were used in a variety of elite strategies at the regional center. As discussed above, Stanish argues that Titicaca Basin elite-administered long distance trade involved acquiring goods for favorable barter rates in distant valleys and then acquiring prestige from the redistribution of these goods. Late Prehispanic elites were probably in a good position to initiate large caravans: they had immense camelid herds and their followers owned them tax payments in the form of labor. In addition, elites would have had the surpluses necessary to initiate a large scale trading venture.
Would such caravans have visited the Chivay source and extracted obsidian for elite consumption or redistribution? Stanish (2003: 69) argues that all Prehispanic trade was administered trade, as opposed to market-driven trade, but he specifically excludes trade in obsidian as "small and light" and capable of being transported through down-the-line exchange. Obsidian does not appear to have been a high prestige item along the lines of precious metals in the prehispanic Andes. Under the Inka there is evidence of control of access to tunnels leading to rich gold mines in the Andes (Burger and Glascock 2002: 364). With obsidian, however, there is no evidence of elite control either in obsidian consumption patterns in regional centers, or in the Arequipa obsidian quarry areas that are generally dispersed and it would have proved difficult to limit access to them (Jennings and Glascock 2002: 115-116). Thus extensive elite-administered acquisition or redistribution of obsidian should not be expected. Nevertheless, given the importance of exchange and non-local goods in issues relating to the origins of social complexity, any evidence of elite-organized raw material procurement should be studied closely.
Elite-administered caravans would be relatively difficult to differentiate from independent caravans in their source activities. Elite related diagnostic pottery may be encountered in the vicinity of the source area. There may have been some degree of greater standardization if these were part time or full-time specialists working for the elites. Elite-sponsored procurement may involve greater intensification than would be expected from independent caravan procurement because these task groups likely have been organized and dedicated to the procurement objective. Finally, the export of large nodules may have increased as elite-sponsored caravan trains were reportedly large and capable, and the weight of nodules would not have overly interfered with the progress of the caravan following this model. In addition, if the object of elites was prestige building, larger nodules would probably have been more impressive in the distant consumption zone. In short, differentiating elite sponsored caravans at the source may be relatively difficult unless pottery or some other diagnostic material is found to have been associated with procurement.