So far, the “vertical” character of north Andean polities has emerged only circumstantially. Potential axes of interdependence may be drawn on a map, yet this does not prove that in any given community economic practice actually reflected the “vertical” problem, or that political behavior obeyed its demands. The matter is not self-evident, because, as Reichel-Dolmatoff demonstrates, some locales could have solved the problem of sheer nutrition by forming a sort of agrarian fortress sufficient to itself.

In fact, however, the evidence from around Quito shows that this was not the case. Community members were able neither to enjoy a culturally acceptable standard of living, nor to conduct the transactions that signaled their status as full and active adults, without sharing directly in the production of large exportable surpluses and the importation of diverse exotic goods. To identify the demand forces which caused these goods to flow then becomes a key step in mapping the political field in which native lords operated; similarly, to describe the cultural context in which each of these goods was consumed becomes a step toward understanding what kind of control over people any given commodity control implied.

This agenda theoretically applies to any of the regions studied. But, because very little data has come to light on the internal life of Yumbo communities, the following generalizations apply primarily to the llajtakuna of the “humid inter-Andean valleys” group, and, with some differences, to the higher portions of the “dry inter-Andean valleys” group.