This collection was made by Inocencio Liberani and Rafael Hernández, teachers of the Colegio Nacional of Tucumán, in order to form an album that illustrates the work done during the course of an expedition organized by them in 1877 to explore the archaeological ruins of “Loma Rica”, in Santa Maria Valley, Catamarca Province.
The album was composed with albumen prints taken from drawings that illustrate site maps, sketches of rooms and dwellings, general views of field encampments and archaeological objects they found during the expedition, as vessels, pots, jars, cooper bells and a metallic disc.
By order of the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública de la Nación a copy was sent, on behalf of Tucuman province, to the Argentine Pavilion at the 1878 Universal Exposition held in Paris.
Of this album, very few copies were edited at the time and in its original version consisted of 11 pages of text and 31 albumen prints mounted on pasteboards. A facsimile version was published by the National University of Tucuman in 1950 under the title Excursión Arqueológica en los valles de Santa María, Catamarca, 1877, Liberani y Hernández. A letter of Liberani’s widow found in the archive suggest that the album was offered to the Museo de La Plata in 1927, which currently preserves only 21 of the 31 original albumen prints.
