Research at prehispanic obsidian sources offer great potential for contributing to the reconstruction of ancient patterns in interaction and production. While all archaeological research is cumulative, quarry research is especially so because every artifact that is sourced contributes to a better understanding of the entire configuration of production and interaction. Therefore one can expect increasing focus upon, and more significant results from research into raw material source areas as archaeological knowledge accumulates. One should also anticipate rapid improvements in the sourcing and knowledge of particular raw materials as technical equipment become more affordable.
Other obsidian sources in the Andes are in need detailed research. In the Andean highlands, studies of the Quispisisa obsidian source (Burger and Glascock 2000;Burger and Glascock 2002) is particularly important as this source has had a long history of use with regional significance extending far beyond the Ayacucho province. Recent work at the high altitude of the Alca source by Rademaker et al. (2004) indicates that extensive obsidian production was occurring on the north slopes of Nevado Firura between 4400 and 4800 masl, above the quarrying work documented by Jennings (2002;Jennings and Glascock 2002). Studies of these production areas will also require detailed examination through excavation because diagnostic materials on the surface of most quarries are slim. Two lithic sources in western Bolivia, the Sora Sora obsidian source and the Querimita basalt source (Giesso 2000;Giesso 2003;Glascock and Giesso 1994;Márquez Ostria, et al. 1975;Ponce Sanginés 1970),were examined by Giesso (2000) and as these materials occurred with frequency in the Tiwanaku core region, the source areas offer potential for providing further insights into Titicaca Basin prehistory that complement those provided here from the Chivay obsidian source.
Innovations in chemical sourcing equipment are making raw material source studies all the more important with passing years. Improvements and reduced costs for portable XRF machines will make raw material sourcing a routine part of lab work. These technologies will have a substantial impact in archaeology because many raw materials that include volcanic rocks, ceramics, ochre, and metals can be sourced, and the maintenance of spatial databases of proveniencing evidence will become a vital task in its own right.
Improvements in remote sensing technologies will probably contribute to identifying raw material sources in coming years. The reflectance properties of high silica materials like obsidian present distinctive spectral values in the thermal bands that can be isolated using techniques like spectral mixture analysis (Lillesand, et al. 2004). Furthermore, disturbed soils are often distinctive in remote sensing imagery, offering another potential venue for differentiating ancient quarries (Carr and Turner 1996). While remote sensing appears to provide a more effective way to locate obsidian sources, there are two major limitations to this approach: (1) thermal band (TIR) imagery tends to be very coarse (e.g., 90m pixels from the ASTER sensor), (2) obsidian is relatively abundant in many regions but distinguishing tool-qualityobsidian from imagery is unlikely. Such technologies can, at minimum, save time by identifying most of the major obsidian sources in a given region and then these sources can be visited individually.