Formal and substantive approaches can be applied in a complementary manner. For example, in Stone Age Economics, Sahlins (1972) attempts to explain the existence of supply and demand curves among aboriginal exchange networks where social parameters determine the development of exchange. Winterhalder (1997) discusses some of the concepts presented by Sahlins (1972) using a behavioral ecology approach to gifts and exchange among non-market foragers. Winterhalder finds that issues such as social distance can be addressed more explicitly in a formal framework, albeit more narrowly, because economizing, neoclassical assumptions are a starting point for this type of analysis. As Hodder (1982: 200) points out, formal and substantive approaches are targeting different behaviors; formal economics relies on outputs and performance, while substantive analyses relate to social contexts of exchange.

While these differences make the two approaches irreconcilable on some levels, some studies attempt to integrate both avenues of research. Drawing on the advantages of both formalism and substantivism may be worthwhile, but a tendency to apply formal analyses to state-level societies, due to greater commercialism and specialization, and to apply substantive analyses to small-scale societies, should be resisted (Granovetter 1985;Gregory 1982;Smith 1999). The assumption that in premarket social contexts economic behavior is heavily embedded in social relations, but then is increasingly atomized and conforming to neoclassic analyses in modern, market-oriented societies is inconsistent. Granovetter (1985: 482) writes

I assert that the level of embeddedness of economic behavior is lower in nonmarket societies than is claimed by substantivists and development theorists, and it has changed less with 'modernization' than they believe; but I argue also that this level has always been and continues to be more substantial than is allowed for by formalists and economists (Granovetter 1985: 482).

Similarly, Danby (2002) observes that there are serious logical flaws in the false dichotomy, widely applied by archaeologists, where neoclassic, cost-minimizing logic is applied to premodern, complex societies but increasingly assuming an embedded "gift" economy among smaller-scale economies.

This dissertation research project follows on the substantivist tradition in the Andes, but formal approaches have been influential in exchange studies worldwide. The weaker elements of the substantivist approach will be avoided by not assuming a direct correspondence between socio-political complexity and volume or type of exchange.