Chivay obsidian occurs in small quantities at a number of Middle Formative sites in the southern Basin including Chiripa and Tumatumani, and it persists at Ch'uxuqullu on the Island of the Sun. At Tumatumani, 3% of the projectile points are made from obsidian(Stanish and Steadman 1994). Bandy(2001: 141)reports that at Chiripa they recovered only small quantities of obsidian in the time spanning 1500-200 BCE and these were in the form of finished bifaces. For the entire time span, after four excavation seasons, they report only 87.1g of obsidian. Tumuku type obsidian was identified in Chiripa in Condori 1B component circa 1500-1000 cal BCE levels(Browman 1998: 310, dates calibrated). At the site of Camata, on the lakeshore south of the modern city of Puno, four obsidian samples were analyzed from contexts that range from circa 1500 - 500 cal BCE and all four were of Chivay type obsidian(Frye, et al. 1998;Steadman 1995).

The evidence from the North Titicaca Basin regional centers is even more intriguing as there is a significant presence of Alca type obsidian during the early part of the Middle Formative, and Chivay obsidian is found in the Cusco Basin during this time. Qaluyu, Pikicallepata, and Marcavalle all contain both Chivay and Alca obsidian between approximately 1100 - 800 cal. BCE, the early part of the Middle Formative(Burger, et al. 2000: 292;Chávez 1980: 249-253). Subsequent to this overlap in obsidian use, there appears to have been significant overlap in other stylistic attributes as well. These similarities include common traits in ceramic vessel forms between Chanapata vessels in the Cusco area and Qaluyu vessels in the North Titicaca Basin(Burger, et al. 2000: 292).

However, during the latter part of the Middle Formative after 800 BCE the Yaya-Mama religious tradition first emerges at the site of Chiripa(Bandy 2004: 330;Chávez 1988), a tradition that eventually unifies the north and south areas of the Titicaca Basin during the Late Formative. As noted by Burger et al.(2000: 311-314), with the appearance of the Yaya-Mama tradition the Alca and Chivay obsidian distributions become more asymmetrical. Alca obsidian makes up 16% (n = 9) of the obsidian in a pre-Pukara context at the site of Taraco on the Titicaca lake edge in the North Basin, however while Chivay obsidian was found at Marcavalle and other Cusco sites previously during the Early Formative, obsidian from the Chivay source is absent during the Middle Formative and it does not re-appear in the Cusco region again until the Inka period. Alca obsidian, on the other hand, expands outward during this period as it is found in the Titicaca Basin to the south-east, and it is also is transported a great distance to Chavín de Huantar. Both of these examples of long distance transport have been attributed to religious pilgrimage(Burger, et al. 2000: 314).