Yale to return Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru
NEW YORK (AFP) — Yale University is to return to Peru thousands of artifacts taken from the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu by a real-life Indiana Jones nearly 100 years ago, the top US university said.
Archaeologist Hiram Bingham, a Yale history professor, stumbled across the Machu Picchu ruins while exploring the Peruvian Andes in 1911, rediscovering an ancient city first built in the 1500s but long-since abandoned.
In the following five years, he took thousands of mummified remains, ceramic fragments, bones and works of art from the site back to Yale, in Connecticut.
The university and the Peruvian government announced at the weekend that after months of negotiations, they had reached agreement over the artifacts, notably acknowledging Peru's title to all the excavated objects.
Under the agreement, Peru is to build a new museum and research center in the city of Cuzco, for which Yale will serve as advisor, where the 4,000 artifacts would be housed after going on an international touring exhibition.
The museum is tentatively due to open in 2011, to mark the centenary of Bingham's rediscovery of the world heritage site, now Peru's top tourist attraction.
"This understanding represents a new model of international cooperation providing for the collaborative stewardship of cultural and natural treasures," Yale said in a statement, announcing the agreement.
Built on a 2,440-meter (7,800-foot) mountain by Incan emperor Pachacutec, Machu Picchu served as a ceremonial center and astronomical observatory, archaeologists believe.
