NEW HAVEN - Yale has agreed to turn over to Peru an inventory of artifacts that explorer Hiram Bingham III carted back with him to New Haven after excavating Machu Picchu, the "lost" city of the Incas, in the Andean mountains nearly a century ago.
August 14, 2007. Source The Hartford Courant by Kim Martineau
Ritual offering vessel or "paccha."
Image courtesy of Yale Peabody Museum
The breakthrough, which may ultimately help decide who gets to keep the ancient Incan artifacts, was reached this summer under Peru's new president, who appears willing to settle the dispute without resorting to the lawsuit threatened by his predecessor.
Peru's housing minister is expected to lead a delegation of Peruvians to New Haven next month to continue talks with Yale.
"Why should we pursue a lawsuit?" said Vladimír Kocerha, a spokesman for the Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C. "Things are progressing. We are talking to them. They are talking to us."
At stake are about 300 museum-quality pieces - skeletons, ceramic pots and jewelry - that Bingham dug up on his historic expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912. The trove awakened the Western world to the wonders of an ancient, highly advanced civilization. A history professor at Yale, Bingham promised to ship his Incan finds back to Peru when he was done studying them, but not all the objects came home as promised.
Peru began to press for the return of its artifacts - a symbol of national identity and pride - after Alejandro Toledo, Peru's first ethnically indigenous president, took office in 2001. For years, Toledo's administration negotiated with Yale but as the end of his term approached in late 2005 Peru threatened to sue, evoking the shameful legacy of European colonial rule in South America. Peru's current president, Alan Garcia, took office last summer before any legal papers were filed.
This spring, Yale President Richard Levin wrote to Garcia suggesting they find a compromise. The response was encouraging. In early June, Garcia appointed his housing minister, Hernán Garrido-Lecca, a Harvard-educated investment banker, to handle the matter.
Later that month Yale's chief counsel visited Peru and Yale agreed to prepare an inventory of the items Bingham excavated. The list should be ready to share with Peru by the end of the year, said Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman.
Though Yale repeatedly offered to show the artifacts jointly with Peru, Yale refused to acknowledge that Peru had full ownership, fearing restrictions that would be placed on research on the bones and other material, the New York Times has reported. The National Geographic Society, which funded Bingham's 1912 expedition, remains firmly on Peru's side in demanding the repatriation of the artifacts.
Most of Bingham's finds were languishing in storage at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History until they were rediscovered by a husband-and-wife anthropology team at the university, Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar. The couple put together a traveling exhibit, "Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas," that came home to New Haven permanently in 2005, just as the dispute with Peru was coming to a head.
A new solution proposed by Yale would put the exhibition back on the road to raise money to build a museum in Cuzco, former capital of the Inca Empire. Yale would then transfer the artifacts there permanently, while maintaining rights to do research on lesser-quality pieces, the New York Times Magazine reported in June. Yale declined to elaborate on that possibility on Monday.
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Yale University will for the first time provide Peru with an inventory of thousands of artifacts taken from Machu Picchu 90 years ago, Peruvian officials said Thursday, as they work to have the objects returned.
August 10, 2007. Source Reuters
Bone shawl pin adorned with two birds
Image courtesy of Yale Peabody Museum
The ruins of Peru's famed Machu Picchu were named last month as one of the new seven wonders of the world.
Negotiations over who owns more than 4,000 pieces of pottery, jewelry and bones from the ancient Inca citadel had stalled are were now progressing, officials said.
"The relationship is moving forward like never before, towards an understanding," said Cecilia Bakula, head of Peru's national institute of culture.
"This has allowed, among other things, for Yale to commit itself to providing a complete inventory of its archeological goods for the first time."
Yale officials declined to comment.
Bakula spoke at an event with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, who visited Lima to say the United States was returning 350 pre-Colombian artifacts to Peru. The artifacts were recovered in Miami under an anti-smuggling accord between the two countries.
Hughes said she supported the talks between Yale and Peru, which have occurred as museums around the world face demands by countries from Peru to Greece and Egypt to return ancient treasures.
"We are delighted these conversations have taken place and we hope they can be resolved in a satisfactory manner that takes into account the interests of both sides," Hughes said.
Peru says the artifacts were lent to Yale for 18 months. But the university has kept them ever since one of its alumni, U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham, rediscovered Machu Picchu in the Andes in 1911.
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