ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that archaeological research in the region would benefit from focusing on the general category of circulation as a domain of social practices that both result from and generate social meanings. It also argues that the concept of landscape understood as indivisibly natural and cultural challenges the traditional notion of the archaeological region that has often been favored in the study of ancient circulation. The chapter explores the multilayered social space during part of the Formative period in Northwest Argentina. Obsidian sources in Northwest Argentina are located in the puna. Obsidian from one of the main sources, Ona-Las Cuevas appears at sites in different micro-environments and with very different material assemblages. While ceramic decoration referred mostly to nearby valleys and some highland settlements, obsidian brought the wider regionality both the sites that shared iconographic motifs with the Aconquija and those that did not into the realm of intimate domestic space.
