If seasonal fairs and aggregations were a feature of the prehispanic altiplano, as discussed by Browman (1990), interactions may have taken notably different forms in those contexts. Seasonal fairs may have had the significance of religious festivals in the contemporary Andes where the devout sometimes travel for weeks in order to arrive at auspicious times. Fairs and cultural occasions may, then, have been blended with economic transactions.

Scheduled festivals with elaborate dances, music, and costumes are a major cultural contribution in contemporary altiplano communities like Paratía (Flores Ochoa 1968) and despite the lack of simple material correlates for archaeological study, cultural items like song and dance were probably significant features in a variety of prehispanic reciprocal exchange contexts (J. Flores Ochoa 2005, pers. comm. July 2005). Despite the relative marginalization of altiplano cities in the modern economy (or perhaps a reflection of this marginalization), traditional festivals endure as important cultural features in the Titicaca Basin. Citing early twentieth-century sources, Browman (1990: 409) reports that at major shrine at Copacabana, Bolivia, between 40,000 and 50,000 "traders" would converge at times scheduled to coincide with ceremonies at the shrine.

If economic transactions occurred in association with these festivals in prehispanic times, either as a central feature or relegated to the periphery of the cultural events, the transactions may have assumed certain characteristics of marketplace exchange. These characteristics would have included public knowledge of barter equivalences and perhaps more immediate, synchronic exchange due to the short time period of convergence at the festival. As mentioned, however, marketplace concentrations do not necessarily imply true "market economies" with fluctuating prices reflecting supply and demand (LaLone 1982). Assuming that economic transactions that may have occurred at these fairs did not create moral conflict (by debasing sacred ceremonies with lowly economic transactions, in a Euro-American perspective) they would have created an excellent context for the transfer of both cultural goods and prestige items, and for the control of certain exchange practices by administrators or elites. Nevertheless the problem remains that dedicated agriculturalists with harvest goods for exchange would have been absent from these fairs on the altiplano because dedicated agriculturalists would not have the schedule or the herd demographics that would have permitted them to initiate long distance caravans. Therefore a variety of strategies probably developed to allow the transfer of products with the emergence of caravans that traveled, on the large scale, according to schedules dictated by seasonal gatherings, harvest schedules, and other economic and cultural circumstances. These developments imply the emergence of something of a continuum between the more alienable exchange that occurred in seasonal gatherings, and more inalienable barter that occurred in the intimate exchange context of compadrazgorelationships.