A focus on social context is emphasized in more recent studies of exchange. Building on Hodder's (1982) development of a "contextual approach" to exchange, archaeologists following this approach argue that the study of production sites has been incomplete because the social and sometimes historical elements of quarries and production systems have been neglected in processual tradition that focuses overwhelmingly on the organization of technology and production efficiency. In particular, Hodder and others have argued that the perspectives on exchange articulated by Mauss (1925) and even by Sahlins (1972) have been largely neglected (to judge from citation patterns) in the formal approaches previously described.

A study by Richard Bradley and Mark Edmonds (1993) focuses on axe production and circulation in Neolithic Britain through an examination of quarry production at the Great Langdale complex in the Cumbrian mountains in the Lake District of the English uplands. This area was a source for a fine-grained volcanic tuff material used for producing stone axe heads that were flaked, ground, and often polished, and have been found in Neolithic. Through petrographic analysis it has been possible to connect many axes made from tuff and granite found throughout Britain with the raw material source in the Great Langdale region, but subsourcing resolution has not been possible.