The models developed here are evaluated against the evidence from the Chivay source acquired in the course of the Upper Colca project. This section, aims to address the models that were introduced in Section 3.7 with the new data acquired in 2003.
The Direct acquisition model describes personal visits to source areas by members of consumption households and it specifically excludes exchange of these goods between households. As per this model one should expect high variability in procurement methods, reduction strategies, and architectural and perhaps ceramics styles. Obsidian is found in both surface contexts and through quarrying, and presumably quarrying began to be practiced as the obsidian available from surface collection became more depleted. Thus, there is evidence in variability in procurement methods and in reduction strategies, however it is difficult to ascertain whether this variability results from procurement differences from non-local visitation, or from diachronic changes in available material.
It was previously suggested (Section 3.7.1) that during the Formative Period non-local visitors from the Lake Titicaca Basin, a known consumption zone for Chivay obsidian, may have left evidence of their presence during personal procurement. In the southern Titicaca Basin a distinct fiber-tempered early pottery tradition was used, but in both the north Titicaca Basin and the Colca area the contemporary pottery was grid tempered. One form of evidence of non-local personal procurement from the southern Titicaca Basin might take the form of sherds of fiber-tempered pottery from utilitarian vessels, although it may be difficult to differentiate from the evidence of fiber-tempered pottery the acquisition of obsidian through personal procurement from trade-item reciprocation. However, very little pottery, local or non-local, was identified in the Maymeja zone of the obsidian source and it is therefore difficult to use pottery to evaluate any of the procurement models. In the adjacent Block 2 survey area, obsidian scatters were often spatially coterminous with "Chiquero" pottery described by Wernke (2003) as a Formative style in the main Colca valley. As the Formative ceramics chronology in the Colca is still being defined, and there may have been differences in ceramic styles by altitudinal and ecological zone as well, it is difficult to definitively state whether all the pottery that appeared to belong to the Formative in the Chivay source area was indeed of local production.
Architecture at the Chivay source was also difficult to connect with the question of local versus non-local acquisition. Several circular structures approximately 2.5m in diameter were encountered in the area of the Maymeja workshop, but as the construction was eroded and appeared to have been expediently built, the association between these buildings and specific architectural traditions in the Colca valley or elsewhere is indeterminate. Wernke (2003) found that circular buildings were prevalent in the higher altitude portions of his survey. Further excavation in the workshop area may expose house floors or ceramics that indicate local or non-local cultural affiliation.
Direct acquisition certainly changed through prehistory from the earliest mobile foragers to the locals who procured material for household needs throughout the prehispanic past. Colca area residents probably procured obsidian for their needs from the Chivay source directly during visits to the high country that were embedded in hunting trips for viscacha, deer, and vicuña. Indeed, it was a local hunter from Chivay, Pedro Huaracha, that guided Sarah Brooks to the obsidian source in 1994 (Brooks 1998: 433-438). When non-local residents, such as residents of the Titicaca Basin, visited the Chivay source as they followed the Escalera-Lecceta route, it was perhaps for personal procurement but more likely it was in the context of caravan-mode circulation, either independent or administered, as described below.
According to this exchange model, local upper Colca communities procured a sufficient excess of obsidian from the Chivay source to supply material into the exchange system for regional circulation. Two principal material expectations were described for this mode: first, the Chivay source area would contain local artifact styles and relatively low variability in procurement; second, that assemblages from the local Upper Colca communities would have some fraction of large obsidian flakes and perhaps cores consistent with the large nodules found in the Maymeja area.
As mentioned, ceramics and architectural evidence are in short supply at the Chivay source itself. There is spatial consistency in the procurement of obsidian, as the quarry pit and the workshop appear to have been repeatedly occupied over the years, but evidence from the both stratified test units show that quarrying and production was episodic. The earliest and the latest (upper-most) levels of the workshop test unit showed intermediate reduction events and some advanced reduction that may have been the result of irregular local visits to the source area.
One could argue that the intensified and regular production observed in the middle levels of the quarry pit test unit and the workshop test unit were the result of locals mining their adjacent obsidian source to meet the demands of the non-local reciprocal exchange network. However, two pieces of evidence contradict this proposal. First, as was described in Section 7.6, if locals were quarrying and producing quantities of obsidian at Maymeja one would expect some fraction of the large nodules to be represented in assemblages from local communities either in Block 2 or Block 3. In fact, very few flakes, cortical or non-cortical, over 4 cm in length were found in Blocks 2 and 3, while over 10% of flakes from the Block 1 Maymeja workshop were in that category. Second, the spatial evidence of intensification that was observed in production in the quarry and workshop was not reflected in evidence of intensified or concentrated obsidian deposits in the Block 2 and 3 areas. In Block 2, concentrations of obsidian flakes were found associated with corrals, but these were consistently small flakes. The question is if locals were responsible for intensified production at the Maymeja quarry, then which locals were conducting this work and why did they not use any of the large nodules in their local economy? The evidence suggests that locals were not involved in intensified obsidian quarrying and production in the Maymeja, but this does not preclude local residents guiding foreign caravans to the source area, or low intensity local procurement activity for local consumption and down-the-line exchange. Indeed, the concentrated obsidian deposits at Taukamayo in Block 3, although consisting of Ob2 material and relatively small flakes, may have been the result of local communities articulating with non-local caravans near the site of modern-day Callalli.
On the regional scale, down-the-line exchange is probably implicated in larger distributions of obsidian, particularly during the Archaic Period prior to the advent of caravan based mobility. A combination of direct, personal procurement and down-the-line exchange may have been the source of obsidian at sites like Asana and Qillqatani during the preceramic. There is evidence to suggest that during the Late Archaic these down-the-line networks may have become more segmentary and isolated. It is during the Late Archaic that Asana no longer contained Chivay obsidian, and projectile point styles during the Late Archaic became increasingly localized. Subsequently, in a dramatic change, during the Terminal Archaic and Early Formative regional exchange became far-reaching, the series 5 projectile point style appears with relatively little variation throughout the central and south-central Andes, and the knowledge of food production and other technologies became widespread. The evidence presented here suggests that exchange patterns, including obsidian procurement through down-the-line and direct acquisition, were relatively reduced during the Late Archaic. During the ensuing Terminal Archaic, with the initiation of regional caravans, major changes include an expansion of regular exchange and temporal consistency in obsidian supply at places like Qillqatani maintained through long-distance relationships as is described by Model C.
The Independent Caravans model entails household level organization of long-distance caravans for the acquisition of specific goods from another region, or for moving goods between a number of communities in a loop and bartering for goods at various locations along the route. The material expectations of this type of obsidian circulation in the Chivay source area include episodic but intense procurement while a caravan was stopped at the obsidian source, and prompt transport of obsidian southward from the Maymeja source area to a principal thoroughfare that connects the Colca with regional travel routes.
The 2003 Upper Colca project results support an interpretation of obsidian production at the Maymeja quarry and the workshop through procurement and circulation by independent llama caravanners, with this mode occurring from the Terminal Archaic through at least the Early Formative. The 2003 results support this interpretation at a number of scales.
(1) Dates.The14C samples collected from the workshop test unit show that intensified production occurred between 2880 and 1260 cal BCE. Based on the evidence of intensity of production, levels 2 through 4 at the quarry pit test unit [Q02-2u2] are tentatively linked with levels 4 and 5 at the workshop [Q02-2u3].
(2) Camelid pastoralist emphasis.Why was obsidian from the quarry pit not reduced at the quarry pit? Instead it appears to have been transported down slope 600m to a site adjacent to water and to a lush grazing area. There are a number of links between pastoralism and obsidian production at the source area that have been explored in detail above.
(3) Transport.It does not appear that locals participating in down-the-line exchange networks were responsible for quarrying and then processing obsidian at the Chivay source workshop because obsidian flakes and cores in the local consumption sites were much smaller than one would expect if local pastoralists were quarrying for large nodules.
(4) Regional consumption.The temporality of consumption in distant sites like Qillqatani suggests that regular, caravan-based exchange was the mode of transport between the source and the consumption zone. It seems more like that caravan traffic, rather than Direct Procurement and Down-the-line exchange, would have resulted in Chivay obsidian consistently representing 10% to 20% of the lithics assemblage at Qillqatani for a period of several thousand years.
That is not to imply that procurement and production for other modes of transport, including personal acquisition and down-the-line exchange, did not occur in Maymeja; only that the intensified production associated with quarrying work and concentrated reduction activities appear to have been linked to caravan-based export. While the pastoral link and the intensified production seem irrefutable, the challenge remains to differentiate independent from administered caravans.
Caravans organized and administered by elites are described in colonial documents from the Lake Titicaca Basin. According to these passages, Titicaca Basin herders could pay part of their annual labor obligations by contributing their labor and their caravan llamas to elite-organized long-distance caravan ventures that procured non-local goods that were, in turn, redistributed to the Titicaca Basin community in the form of feasts. Material expectations at the Chivay source for obsidian procurement and circulation under elite-sponsored caravans were discussed in Section 3.7.4. It could be relatively difficult to differentiate independent from elite-sponsored caravans from archaeological evidence because the actual caravanners in either case are commoners from altiplano herding communities.
Evidence of elite-organized obsidian procurement was not found, nor were walls or other defensive structures encountered that would have been protecting the obsidian source for some kind of access monopoly. Social mechanisms for monitoring and control of the source area are a possibility in prehistory but evidence of the use of distinctive artifact styles as a signal of "ownership" of the source area were not encountered in 2003. This is consistent with other obsidian sources in the Andes, such as Alca and Quispisisa (Burger, et al. 1998;Burger and Glascock 2002;Jennings and Glascock 2002), where quarrying remains and workshops rarely contain discrete evidence of hierarchy at the source, or even cultural affiliation from specific groups known to have used those sources, such as the Wari. In North America, in an examination of Mississippian chiefdom hoe production and consumption, Cobb (2000: 195) found no evidence of hierarchy at the Mill Creek quarries over the course of four centuries of quarrying. Cobb compares this with ethnographically documented quarrying in New Guinea for ceremonial axe blades, and similarly at this quarry no evidence was found of hierarchy in production in a tribal society, despite the fact that the blades were often finished at the quarry site (Burton 1984).
The geography of the Chivay source area presents natural defensive features, such as restricted entrances to the Maymeja area that are only available along a half-dozen routes that are not cliff faces. None of the access routes showed evidence of defensive fortification or restriction. In fact, these routes were generally improved with a roadway on one exit [A03-268] and a short portion of stairway on another egress. The consumption patterns of obsidian from the Late Formative until the Inka period do not suggest that evidence of elite-sponsored quarrying would be encountered (Section 3.5.3) Assemblages at Tiwanaku suggest to Giesso (2003) that the state controlled the acquisition of obsidian from Chivay (Cotallalli) and basalt from Querimita, however there are a number of articulation points between the Chivay source and the Tiwanaku core 300 km to the south-east where the state could exercise control of the obsidian entering the core region. Recent perspectives on the probable ethnic diversity subsumed by the corporate strategies of the Tiwanaku state (Goldstein 2005;Janusek 2004;Stanish 2002) highlight the variability that might be expected in the nature of relationships between Tiwanaku elites and communities in its periphery. If the internal ethnic constituency of the Tiwanaku state, and the polities that preceded Tiwanaku in the Titicaca Basin, were more diverse than previously thought, then it is possible that many of the corporate themes were a reflection of the need to centralize the political economy because the population was relatively heterogeneous.
In the Chivay source area, the only distinctive evidence of non-local, state-affiliated materials were sherds and architecture in styles belonging to the imperial Inka. These sherds and structures are almost certainly mortuary facilities, although it is also possible that they are shrines associated with water emerging from the spring in Maymeja. Given the reduced importance of obsidian in the Inka sphere, it seems unlikely that the Inka presence in the Maymeja area was related to administered obsidian production.
The above obsidian procurement and circulation models are not mutually exclusive, and the implications can be considered synthetically in light of previously discussed exchange models in the Andes. The evidence just presented suggests that while obsidian procurement and initial production at the Chivay source was predominantly direct procurement, and transport via direct and down-the-line models of circulation, there was an important period of intensified procurement of obsidian that occurred during the Terminal Archaic through the Early and Middle Formative Periods. Obsidian is available on the surface surrounding Cerro Hornillo and the many small scatters on the ridges and in shelters in this area suggest that informal production occurred at various times in prehistory. These scattered reduction sites were complemented by evidence of intensive production that occurred in the southern portion of Maymeja where it appears that the principal goal was acquiring larger nodules of obsidian.
Models that attribute the origins of long-distance trade caravans to administered trade based on elite strategies (Stanish 2003: 69) have similarities to the models that limit the inducement to long-distance exchange to elite competition (Berdan 1989: 99;Brumfiel and Earle 1987). Following this perspective, in a context of down-the-line exchange it was elite demands and finance for procuring non-local goods that prompted the development of regular, long-distance caravan exchange, and then trade expanded to accommodate the needs of the wider population. As discussed by Smith (1999: 113), these perspectives place multifaceted processes like exchange into dichotomous terms. Differentiating elite from commoner demands, and defining prestige and utilitarian goods across the wide prehistoric variability in time and space is especially difficult. In the Andes, if "virtually all trade in the Andes conforms to what Polyani referred to as 'administered trade'" (Stanish 2003: 69) then how does one explain the consistently high percentages of non-local lithics due to long distance trade, as documented in primarily Formative levels at Qillqatani? It is argued here that these percentages are in excess, in both quantity and regularity, of the sporadic incidence of obsidian one might expect from down-the-line exchange over 200 km of largely homogeneous puna. If this regular consumption of non-local goods is indeed the product of independent caravans that began in the Terminal Archaic then it demonstrates an upswing in long-distance interaction that was founded on camelid domestication but it predates evidence of social ranking.