In contemporary contexts, peddlers are found with frequency in areas that form boundaries areas between different commercial spheres of interaction and lacking in consistent distribution of goods. Browman (1990: 422) reviews ethnographic evidence for mobile peddlerswho perform bulk-forming and bulk-breaking services in the south-central Andean highlands. The peddlers will provide manufactured items to rural pastoral communities, though often at a substantial mark-up, and will trade for items like hides and wool in time for purchasing fairs in the regional centers. The puna between Lake Titicaca and the western slopes in Arequipa are particularly active with comerciantes ambulanteswho schedule their travel cycles to correspond with patron saint festivals, as well as distributing goods to communities without regular markets (Flores Ochoa 1977: 148 ;Flores Ochoa and Najar Vizcarra 1976) as well as traveling herbalists and related groups (Bastien 1987). In the small community of Cerrillos in southwestern Bolivia near the Argentinian border, Nielsen (2001: 166) reports that peddlers, referred to as cambalacheros, would pedal bicycles from the city of Oruro bringing clothes and metal pots to sell or to barter for hides.

The Collaguas of the Colca valley were frequently visited by itinerant peddlers from Puno, according to Casaverde (1977: 185). These vendors known as polveñosmaintain established compadrerelationshipswith Colca valley households in order to have reliable hosts and potential buyers in the valley. Although transactions frequently take place through barter and the host and other residents are not obliged to trade, the profit motive of the peddlers is understood. These examples illustrate some of the variety in forms of distribution that may have had some basis in the prehispanic economy.