One reason that subsistence goods, cultural goods, and prestige goods are non-exclusive categories is that consumption patterns associated with these goods have changed as availability changed through time. The availability of a given material changes through time, be it obsidian in the prehispanic Andes or glass drinking vessels in ancient Rome, and availability conditions the importance of its consumption (Appadurai 1986: 38-39;Smith 1999: 113-114). In cases of intensified craft production, availability may be determined by labor specialization, production units, intensity, locus of control, and context of production (Costin 2000). With commodities based on raw materials, the primary determinant of availability in most cases is geographical distance from the source, but economic patterns, socio-political barriers, technology of procurement and transport, and rate of consumption all affect availability.

Along with naturally occurring raw materials that are irregularly distributed across the natural landscape, such as obsidian where sources are rare, one may expect behaviors associated with scarcity to apply to geologically occurring minerals only with diminished availability as one moves away from the source of these goods. Thus the availability of goods such as obsidian over the larger consumption zone for these materials will vary from abundant to scarce depending on geographical relationships and socio-economic links between the source and the consumption zone. The archaeological study of commodity distribution, and in particular the relationship to economy and to socio-political evolution, spawned years of research into regional exchange beginning with the work of Colin Renfrew (1969) and that of his colleagues.