Previous Page Back to Project Gallery Antiquity Vol 79 No 306 December 2005 The first Hispano-Indigenous archaeological project in the Humahuaca Rift Valley, Argentina Mariel Alejandra López Objects of Hispanic origin dating to the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries AD have been found in funereal contexts in several indigenous sites within the Humahuaca Rift Valley (figure 1). Until now, these scarce objects, which have still not been thoroughly analysed, have been the only indicators of early contact between Hispanic and Indigenous peoples. Due to the importance of this archaeological problem, a new research project has been established in order to analyse whether or not these objects formed correlated evidence of direct contact or were introduced through exchange of goods networks already in existence in the Andean world and within the region. So far, the degree of contact between these two worlds has not been specifically examined from an archaeological perspective, and there has been no in-depth interdisciplinary study of archaeological and ethnohistorical sources dedicated to the theme. Figure 1. Plan of Humahuaca Rift Valley, Argentina.