Peru Fights Yale To Reclaim Artifacts
More than half-a-millennium old, some ancient Incan artifacts from the Machu Picchu ruins in Peru have sparked quite the present day international dispute, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod.
Yale University has them. Peru wants them back.
"Right now Yale believes that it has clear title to them," says Barbara Shailor, deputy provost for the arts at Yale.
"Why do the artifacts belong back here in Peru?" asks historian Mariana Mould de Pease. "Because they were made here."
When Yale professor Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu early last century, he carted thousands of pieces of pottery, jewelry, even bone fragments, back to Yale's campus in New Haven, Conn. Peru says it was a temporary arrangement for 18 months.
"The Peruvian government said, you take these artifacts because you want to do research," de Pease said. "The understanding was you give them back. That was in 1916."
As with any dispute, both sides are looking at the same set of events and drawing two very different pictures. But here's what's not in dispute, not here in Peru nor on the Yale campus. When it comes to the bulk of the artifacts, Yale doesn't want to give them back. When the Peruvian government asked for the artifacts back, de Pease said Yale's response was "arrogant."
"They tried to convince Peru that we were not able to conduct serious research, that we were not able to take care of those artifacts," she said.
"We believe we've been good stewards for the last almost 100 years and that we want to see that stewardship continue for the next 100 years and beyond," Shailor said.
As often happens, Axelrod reports, the strong feelings are leading to strong words, like looting.
"Because looting is not only taking away and hiding the objects you are taking with you, looting is saying you can't take care of the things, that's why I keep them," de Pease says.
"This is not loot," Shailor says. "It was not the spoils of war. And the conditions under which they were brought to New Haven, I believe, were legitimate ones."
Yale has offered to return some of the artifacts. But not nearly enough for the Peruvian government, which wants them all back in time for Machu Picchu's centenary in 2011. If not, it has threatened a modern day remedy - a lawsuit.