The three major types of survey strategy applied in the Upper Colca Project, described in Section 5.4.2, were forms of sampling. In particular, surveying with a widely spaced surveyor interval is a type of spatial sampling. In general, a 15m surveyor interval was employed which resulted in a tight enough interval to capture a large proportion of smaller sites as well as larger sites.

During survey work, field collections largely consisted of unsystematic "grab bag" collections of diagnostic or otherwise interesting artifacts together with some proportion of representative or typical artifacts from the site or locus. High density lithic loci were sampled in two specific ways using 100% collection units. During the first step, a 1x1m total collection unit was placed on the estimated highest density area of the locus and all artifacts were collected within that 1x1. During the second step, additional 1x1m units were randomly placed throughout the locus in the strategy known as cluster sampling (see Section 5.4.5).