The Terminal Archaic ushers in a suite of social and economic changes in the south-central Andes and, consistent with these developments, obsidian begins to circulate in significantly greater quantities during this period. Obsidian is increasingly used for projectile points during the Terminal Archaic, a trend that continues into the Formative Period (Burger, et al. 2000: 294).

Regional patterns in Terminal Archaic sites are somewhat difficult to assess from surface finds because the Terminal Archaic is lacking in exclusive diagnostic artifacts in both the lithic or ceramic artifact classes. As is shown inXFigure 3-10X, the most common projectile point styles that belong to the Terminal Archaic, such as Types 5B and 5D, also persist through the ceramic periods, leaving only type 5A and part of type 4F as diagnostic to exclusively the Terminal Archaic (Klink and Aldenderfer 2005: 48). Furthermore, by definition, the Terminal Archaic is a preceramic period, which precludes a ceramic means of assigning chronology. From site organization characteristics, a site might be considered to be a Terminal Archaic site if it has pastoralist attributes but it is aceramic and has series 5 projectile point types represented that belong, at least partially, to the Terminal Archaic.

The beginnings of the Andean agropastoral strategy are apparent during this period at sites like Asana where seasonal residential movement occurred between the high sierra and the puna (Aldenderfer 1998: 261-275;Kuznar 1995). Another attribute of the Terminal Archaic at Asana is a disappearance of ceremonial features. Evidence for a shift from hunting to pastoralism comes primarily from evidence of corrals (Aldenderfer 1998), from changes in the ratio of deer to camelid remains, and from the ratio of camelid neonate to adult remains. At sites where the process has been observed, the transition to full pastoralism at various sites in the Andes is usually perceived as a gradual process dating to sometime between 3300 to 1500 BCE At Qillqatani, however, the transition was relatively abrupt and it occurred in level WXXIV that dates to approximately 2210-1880 BCE (XTable 3-1X).