Documento mecanografiado.

Contenido: Introduction -- The two models or patterns -- Summary -- Bibliography

There are two discrete patterns of alpaca and llama herding in the Precolumbian Central Andes. The first of these is an earlier pattern, where pastoralism and pastoral products provided 50 (por ciento) or more of subsistence, and where horticulture and hunting where secondary adjuncts. The second is a later pattern, carried on into contemporary communities, where agriculture is the major subsistence base, with herds being important for long-term insurance fuctions, for pack animals and goods in elaborate trade networks with agricultural communities, and for the means with which they provide the individual to participate in the institutionalized system of reciprocity, but where in general the alpacas and llamas contribute relatively little directly to the subsistence base in terms of meat or nutrition per se.