While formal and substantivist economics have been used to investigate regional interaction and exchange worldwide, this dissertation research follows on the substantivist tradition in Andean archaeology. The exchange issues explored above can be summarized in following three themes.
Exchange from the perspective of commodity 'exchangeability' and demand by consumers is a cross-culturally comparable (and often archaeologically detectable) means of assessing value, but this approach depends on the goods actually circulating. Others have observed that some inalienable objects (heirlooms) are valued precisely because they do not circulate, and the ability of an object to "accumulate history" is another means of establishing value albeit a measure that is difficult to establish archaeologically.
The continuum of social distance is useful in that it captures the role of different behavior and institutions in exchange as one moves away from the household, and it may parallel formal models of kin selection. Further, the concepts of production and social distance for a commodity like obsidian can be empirically linked to expectations about the degree of lithic reduction as one moves from production to consumption contexts. The use of the social distance concept to position a diachronic, "primitive" household (substantive) exchange against a synchronic, "modern" and commercialized (formal) realm is a problematic and false dichotomy. Virtually all exchange contexts contain elements of both social contracts and economical behavior. Social distance, territoriality, and access to products can be manifested in a variety of ways that range from the organization of technology, socially circumscribed access, and symbolic restrictions; a situation that poses difficulties for archaeologists attempting to establish the relative accessibility of a particular product prehistorically.
Exchange is a mechanism that brings goods and people together between ecological zones and across social boundaries, and exchange creates strategic opportunities for individuals and institutions. Exchange is sometimes used to reinforce status differences because the possession of exotic goods, and the necessary surplus to acquire non-local products, differentially favors those with established regional ties. However exchange across boundaries, along with warfare and ritual, can be dangerous and may be the domain of strategic and opportunistic individuals as traffic in the exotic, and contact with foreign elements, is liable to challenge the social order. Conversely, one of the often-noted social consequences of regular exchange is more mundane: exchange serves to reinforce long distance social ties over time, to buffer risk, and to express cohesiveness through common access to distinct resources.
In recent decades, exchange studies in archaeology have acquired new technical rigor with advances in chemical proveniencing. While the cultural, institutional, and theoretical ramifications of exchange remain complex and nuanced, the demonstrable fact of chemical characterization offers refreshing certainty to the otherwise conditional and qualified study of ancient exchange.