Yale At Last Returns Final Machu Picchu Artifacts to Peru
Yale University’s and Peru’s flags flying in front of the Casa Concha Museum in Cusco, Peru
Nov 12, 2012
Yale Daily News
Earlier today, Yale quietly returned the third and final batch of thousands of Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru, marking an end to the years-long dispute between Peru and Yale that led to a lawsuit four years ago.
The touchdown of today’s 127-box shipment was the final of three deliveries, which was financed by Yale. The University shipped the first fraction of the artifacts in March 2011 and the second last December. Yale and Peru resolved the lawsuit in November 2010, when the University agreed to return the pottery shards and other artifacts that Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham III recovered during trips to Machu Picchu between 1911 and 1916. Tensions grew over the ownership of the artifacts and culminated in December 2008 when Peru sued Yale over the relics.
The dispute lasted years, garnering national media attention and responses from the Yale community.
Though the Peruvian government threatened to sue University President Richard Levin personally in 2008, Peruvian Ambassador to the United States Harold Forsyth presented Levin with the “Orden del Sol,” or the “Great Cross” grade of the Order “The Sun of Peru” last September.
Many of the artifacts are currently on display at the Casa Concha Museum in Cusco, Peru.
Yale Agrees To Return Machu Picchu Artifacts to Peru
Peru President Says Yale to Return Inca Artifacts
Nov 20, 2010
The Associated Press
LIMA, Peru — Peru’s president announced Friday that Yale University has agreed to return thousands of artifacts taken away from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu nearly a century ago.
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Machu Picchu 100th Anniversary Likely To Lack Yale’s Artifacts
Machu Picchu Centennial Likely To Lack Yale Artifacts
A Peruvian couple admires an Incan aribalo vase in a Lima museum
Yale Daily News
May 13, 2010
With the 100th anniversary of Hiram Bingham’s discovery of the Inca archeological treasure Machu Picchu approaching, Peru’s Chamber of Tourism is preparing to celebrate — but without many of the site’s most precious artifacts, which remain in Yale’s collection…
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Did Hiram Bingham Discover Machu Picchu Artifacts–Or Buy Them?
Hiram Bingham at Machu Picchu in 1912
Bingham Didn’t Dig Up The Yale Huacos –He Just Bought Them
August 6, 2009
Caretas
By Nicholas Asheshov
Here in Urubamba Hiram Bingham’s reputation has taken a knock in the run-up to the centennial of the discovery in 1911 of Machu Picchu.
The revisionists are saying that Bingham was not just a persistent explorer but also, frankly, a humbug.
Bingham’s economical use of the truth has been compounded by the poorly-advised refusal of Yale University and its Peabody Museum of Natural History to return, as promised, what Bingham’s Yale expeditions dug up in the Vilcabamba 1912-15.
The Peruvian government is taking Yale to court but they’re not pushing it.
Here’s why. None of the good pieces in the Yale Machu Picchu collection were actually dug up by Yale archaeologists.
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Ex-Peruvian First Lady Slams Yale Over Machu Picchu Artifacts
Eliane Karp-Toledo and her husband, Alejandro Toledo, at his inauguration in 2001 at Machu Picchu
Peruvian Blasts Yale
Yale Daily News
April 7, 2009
As a crowd of students, faculty and even a few Peruvians hissed and clapped, Eliane Karp-Toledo, the former first lady of Peru, called for the immediate return of all Inca artifacts housed at Yale last night.
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Peru Files Lawsuit Against Yale University Over Machu Picchu Artifacts
Peru sues Yale University to recover “Machu Picchu” artifacts
Living in Peru
December 10, 2008
Peru has quietly filed a lawsuit against Yale University, officially turning a nearly century-long dispute over the rightful ownership of Inca artifacts into a legal battle, reported Wednesday Yale Daily News…
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Peru to Sue Yale University over Hiram Bingham’s Machu Picchu Artifacts
Report: Peru to Sue Yale for Inca Artifacts
The Associated Press
November 9, 2008
LIMA, Peru: Peru has reportedly approved a plan to sue Yale University for thousands of Inca artifacts excavated decades ago by a U.S. scholar at Machu Picchu.
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Peru-Yale Machu Picchu Controversy Part 12
Indiana Jones: The Men and the Myth
Friday, May 09, 2008
NPR: On Point
By host Tom Ashbrook
It’s just a matter of days now, and Indiana Jones is back in a theater near you.
Harrison Ford, the leather jacket, the bullwhip, the fedora — 27 years after “Raiders of the Lost Ark” they’re practically archeological artifacts themselves. But who cares? Everybody wants to get back to snakes and jungle and desert and adventure.
At Yale, where the new film, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” opens in ivy splendor, that story — a true story — has never gone away. In fact, it’s hot.
This hour, On Point, we’ve got real-life derring-do, and the return of Indiana Jones [who this time goes off to Peru]…
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Peru-Yale Machu Picchu Controversy Part 11
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.”
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Peru-Yale Machu Picchu Controversy Part 10
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.
