Obsidian knapping at rest areas

One plausible scenario for the quantity of obsidian in the Block 2 area would have caravan drivers resting for several days after the arduous climb from the Colca valley and knapping obsidian in the Block 2 area while their herds recover from the climb. Perhaps caravans would periodically venture into the Maymeja area of the Chivay source and recover larger nodules. Local herders also use the Block 2 puna and perhaps they were involved in obsidian procurement. Local herders, arguably more familiar with the obsidian source itself, could have brought obsidian to this area and passing caravans resting in the area may have traded for nodules and this would have contributed more obsidian to the Block 2 area.

The evidence from Block 2, however, is overwhelmingly of advanced stage obsidian reduction, and therefore if whole nodules were being exported from the Chivay source in whole form then they were not being knapped at Block 2. This evidence suggests that nodules were being reduced at the Maymeja workshop over in Block 1, or being exported from the region in whole form. Primary reduction and the use of large obsidian artifacts was not occurring in Block 2. As mentioned above, 10% of the flakes in Block 2 were over 4cm in length and neither cortical, nor non-cortical, flakes approach this size potential in Block 2. The absence of large flakes in this area, a zone rich in small obsidian flakes, is curious and it suggests that non-local caravans were responsible for the quarrying activity in Block 1. The larger (15-20 cm long), Ob1 nodules would have had to have been quarried, and some fraction of them knapped, in the Maymeja zone and then transported from the region without further processing in areas such as Block 2.