Monday, November 22, 2010

Yale Capitulates on Machu Picchu Archaeological Materials

Yale has capitulated to Peru's demands that artifacts from Machu Picchu be repatriated. See
http://opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=1997

The nastiness of Peru's concerted campaign against the University, which recently included staged demonstrations and even threats of criminal prosecution, belies the conciliatory language in Yale's press release. See http://culturalpropertylaw.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/peru-mounts-campaign-against-yale-to-reclaim-artifacts/

Presumably, this decision will just encourage other repatriation demands. It certainly underscores the fact that a pre-1970 provenance is not the "safe harbor" archaeologists have claimed in order to induce museums to change their acquisition policies.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the linkback, Peter. :) I'm working on an article on the Yale-Peru saga and will post a copy to my blog when its done.