Yale University and the government of Peru have made significant progress in their negotiations over the fate of artifacts taken from Machu Picchu nearly a century ago. The university has agreed to provide a full inventory of those artifacts to an official Peruvian delegation that will visit New Haven, Conn., next month, the Yale Daily News reported.

For several years, Peru has been pressing the university about the artifacts, which were gathered in 1912 by Hiram Bingham III, an archaeologist whose expeditions to the Andes were financed by Yale and the National Geographic Society. Machu Picchu, which is now an important tourist attraction in Peru, is believed to have been built by the Incas during the 15th century.

Early last year, various news reports suggested that Peru was preparing to sue the university for the artifacts’ return. The 1912 agreement that permitted Bingham to undertake the most important Machu Picchu excavation contained ambiguous language about whether Yale would retain title to the artifacts or simply receive them as a long-term loan, according to a long account of the dispute that appeared in The New York Times Magazine two months ago.

But relations between Peru and the university have grown much more cordial since Alan García succeeded Alejandro Toledo as Peru’s president last summer. It is almost certain that the dispute will be settled amicably and out of court, according to a Peruvian Embassy official quoted by the Yale Daily News. —David Glenn