In a cross-cultural perspective, Andean exchange relationships throughout prehistory exhibited characteristic organizational traits of societies dwelling in mountain ecological zones; although in the late prehispanic periods distinctive features of inter-zonal control emerged in the south-central Andes. There is general consensus among Andeanists that the mechanisms of merchantilism and market economies - prices reflecting supply and demand - did not exist in the late prehispanic south-central Andes[2].

Polanyi's substantivist economic typology based on peasant households in non-capitalist settings is still widely used in the Andes with some modification.

Reciprocity, redistribution, and non-market trade are the institutional means by which indigenous Andean economies operate. All evidence points to the overriding fact that true market systems did not operate in the central Andes, as they did in central Mexico and in a number of complex societies of the Old World. Exchange did exist on a massive and pervasive scale, however, and the concept of administered trade is the superior means of understanding this phenomenon in the prehispanic central Andes. Trade existed, but it was not one based on market principles. Virtually all cases of trade were administered by some corporate group, constituted along sociological (kinship) or political lines (Stanish 1992: 15).

The major modes of economic interaction will be reviewed below. Finally, the closing section of chapter 3 will explore more specific material expectations of how each of these economic modes may appear in procurement areas such as the Chivay obsidian source.