The strongest evidence for merchant specialists in the Andean region comes from relatively peripheral areas of the Inka Empire, from the Pacific coast of what is now Peru, and from the coast and highlands of prehispanic Ecuador. The coastal Late prehispanic traders of Chincha, near the Paracas peninsula, have been described as consisting of 6000 merchants who traded in Cusco, among the Colla (and presumably the Collagua), and in Ecuador, but little is known about how these expeditions were organized(Patterson 1987;Rostworowski 1976;Rostworowski 1977;Sandweiss 1992). LaLone(1982: 308)notes that Rostworowski was not able to connect Chincha traders with marketplaces despite her assertion that these represented commercial exchange. Sandweiss(1992: 10)believes that Chincha trading expanded a great deal under the Inka following the Inka conquest of the Chimu to the north.

Coastal products such as spondylous and other goods were known to have been transported in large balsa rafts. There are numerous contact-period accounts of merchants plying the Pacific littoral beginning with the renowned loaded boat of balsa logs encountered off the coast of Ecuador by Pizarro on his second trip south, several years before the actual Spanish invasion of the Andes(Hemming 1970;Murra 1980: 140). The boat had a crew of 20 and had a small cabin and cotton sails. Murra is confident the boat was an Inka "registry" because the crew knew Quechua and a few were captured by the Pizarro's army who later used them as interpreters. While the Spanish paid particular attention to precious metals, the contents appear to have contained wealth goods including gold and silver ornaments, bracelets and anklets, headdresses and mirrors, and a great deal of cotton, wool and rich embroidery. A small weighing scale as well as a great deal of shell, probably spondylous and strombus, were found on board(Hemming 1970;Murra 1980: 140). Although the activity of this boat was described as trade (the word rescataris used in the text) by the Spanish observer Sámano-Xerez written in 1527-1528(Porras Barrenechea 1937: 21), it is highly likely that this boat, with its cargo of elite goods, was in fact carry ritual offerings from the Inka to some northern destination. The evidence for long distance exchange between Ecuador and Mesoamerica has been long been a topic of interest in New World archaeology(Coe 1960;Zeidler 1977).