Down-the-line procurement involves local people visiting the Chivay source and acquiring goods to supply the reciprocal exchange network, however large that it may be. In the quarry area one should expect local visitors, and therefore local styles in both discarded materials and local architecture. Procurement may take place in the context of embedded economic activities, such as hunting forays into the high country or pasturing of camelids in the rich bofedal adjacent to the source.

If reciprocation for obsidian takes the form of portable objects, such as non-local ceramics, one may encounter diagnostic, non-local goods in the communities adjacent to the obsidian source. These may be in the form of styles belonging to neighboring communities, or more exotic styles may be found on non-local goods that could have arrived through the exchange network from even more distant areas. There is a high likelihood that reciprocation for obsidian would have taken place in other forms as well: goods that are perishable, labor, or other assets that are otherwise less easy to detect.

If locals are involved obsidian procurement at the Chivay source one may also find that the large nodules available at the Chivay source are used in the local economy as well. That is, if nodules in the Chivay source are up to 30cm in length then large flakes, either cortical or non-cortical, may be expected to have been discarded in residential contexts in local communities. If large nodules are available then those that are not exchanged with reciprocal partners are put to use for local needs. Thus when large cores and flakes are procured in the Chivay source area, then appropriately large flakes should be discarded in the middens of communities in the adjacent consumption zone in the upper Colca.

Procurement and initial reduction at the source will have relatively low variability because it is conducted by the same local methods. Local people will have better knowledge of high quality extraction loci and perhaps there is lower variability in procurement locations as a result. As reciprocity networks, and particularly barter arrangements, are contingent on visual attributes of bartered items one should expect medium reduction of material at the source or in the adjacent communities. At the very least, nodules will be partially decorticated and an initial strike that provides entry into the core should be expected, as this serves to expose the quality of material on the interior to barter partners. Furthermore, if transport does not involve camelid cargo animals (because reciprocity is either taking place pre-domestication during the Archaic Forager period, or otherwise does not involve camelids) one might expect a greater concern for the weight of the nodules and therefore further reduction in the vicinity of the obsidian source.

More advanced reduction may also be expected as it minimizes risk and waste by producing blanks, preforms, and prepared cores in the vicinity of the source where obsidian is abundant. However, according to the Down-the-line model producers have the greatest social distance, and therefore the least information, about their consumers. Advanced reduction limits the possible forms that artifacts may take, and therefore producers would need to know what kinds of tools consumers were planning to produce in order to move beyond initial stages of reduction. Thus medium level reduction might be expected, but not an abundance of advanced reduction at the Chivay obsidian source.