Yale and Peruvian University to Run Center Housing Incan Artifacts

Yale University said today that it would return to Peru thousands of ancient Incan artifacts that were taken from Machu Picchu by a Yale researcher almost a century ago and have been the subject of a lengthy dispute that was settled only last fall. Under an agreement described in a Yale news release, the artifacts will be housed at a new center, for research and education, that will be jointly run by Yale and the National University of St. Anthony Abbot, in Cusco, Peru. The agreement calls for faculty and student exchanges between the two institutions. The 4,000 artifacts, including ceramics, bones, and tools and other objects made of metal and stone, were removed from Machu Picchu from 1911 to 1916 by the pioneering Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham III.