When the Yale University professor Hiram Bingham III discovered and excavated Machu Picchu nearly a century ago, he and his team shipped nearly 5,000 ancient artifacts back to the Connecticut institution — and planted the seeds of an acrimonious, modern-day custody battle between Yale and Peru. The fight, described in the Sunday magazine of The New York Times, pits Yale scholars and administrators, who believe the artifacts — mostly bones, pottery, and metalwork — can best be preserved and studied at the university, against rival academics and politicians in Peru, who seek the return of their “cultural patrimony.”

The battle is but one instance of an issue now confronting many museums and educational institutions around the world, over who owns the relics of ancient people. There is no easy answer, but there are precedents in academe. Among them, the University of Chicago returned ancient Persian artifacts to Iran in 2004, and Harvard University returned American Indian remains to a tribe in New Mexico in 1999. In the case of an ancient skeleton known as the Kennewick Man, however, courts sided with scientists over groups that sought to block further studies of the remains. —Charles Huckabee