Peru wants Yale to return artifacts
April 17, 2008
Associated Press
NEW HAVEN, Conn. –In the latest twist in a long running dispute, Peru wants Yale University to return thousands of artifacts it is holding from the famed Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.
Peru’s government and Yale had reached a memorandum of understanding last year to return about 4,000 pieces that had been taken from the site a century ago. The preliminary agreement called for Yale and Peru to co-sponsor first a traveling expedition featuring the pieces, and later a museum in the Andean city of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital.
But the two sides have been unable so far to reach a final agreement on the mummies, ceramics, bones and other artifacts.
Peru officials have sent a letter to Yale with a counterproposal calling for all the pieces to be returned to Peru, according to Vladimir Kocerha, press officer for the Peruvian embassy in Washington, D.C.
“The counterproposal is for all the pieces to come back,” Kocerha said Thursday. “The ball right now is in Yale’s court.”
(more…)
What Yale brought back from Machu Picchu
April 18, 2008
Yale Alumni Magazine
In the past week, a furor erupted when the government of Peru issued a press release saying that Yale has 40,000 objects from Machu Picchu and that Yale had claimed to have only 4,000. “Yale’s Machu Picchu Haul 10 Times As Big As Thought,” read the headline in The Guardian (U.K.).
There are numerous bones and bone fragments from humans and animals.
Peru issued the press release after Peruvian experts returned from a trip to Yale, in which they meticulously reviewed Yale’s own inventory of the artifacts. But Yale’s inventory — which it had posted online in early March — has shown all along how many artifacts there are. Yale’s total is some 5,700 (not 4,000), and that figure is the total number of lots. As is clear in the photographs included in several chapters of the inventory, each lot may include one, three, six-or even two dozen pieces.
The inventory includes hundreds of pages of descriptions and photos. The great bulk of the material comprises vast numbers of potsherds, none of them highly decorated or in good condition; all have been catalogued and grouped to keep sherds from the same pots together. There are also numerous bones and bone fragments from animals, such as birds, alpacas, and Peruvian hares, as well as many human bone fragments. One of the 13 sections of the inventory, labeled “Museum” (PDF doc), lists objects that appear to be of museum quality. These include a number of higher-quality ceramic pieces, with complex geometric patterns or glossy finishes, and many pieces of metalwork in bronze and silver — some two dozen shawl pins, two large needles, and several thin disks and pendants, among others.
posted on May 15th, 2008 in Uncategorized
Peru Questions Yale on Inventory of Artifacts
by Diane Orson
NPR
[5 min 51 sec]
All Things Considered
April 15, 2008
A former Peruvian first lady’s criticism of Yale University and the government of Peru for a tentative agreement to return Incan artifacts led to a review of Yale’s inventory. Now, the Peruvian government wants to revise the deal.
Listen to the Program
