Posted on 01/10/2006 4:59:41 AM PST by Republicanprofessor
MACHU PICCHU, PERU – The Incas built this mysterious city here, it is told, to be closer to the gods. It was placed so high in the clouds, at 7,700 feet, that the empire- raiding Spaniards never found, or destroyed, it.
Today, visitors to Machu Picchu see well-preserved ruins hidden among the majestic Andes: complete with palaces, baths, temples, tombs, sundials, and agricultural terraces, and also llamas roaming among hundreds of gray granite houses.
But they won't find too many bowls, tools, ritual objects, or other artifacts used by the Incas of the late 1400s. To see those, they have to travel to New Haven, Conn.
Yale historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911, and, backed by the National Geographic Society, returned with large expeditions in 1912 and 1915, each time carting out - with supposed special permission from Peruvian President Augusto B. Leguía - crates filled with archeological finds.
But now, Peru is threatening to sue the Ivy League school, claiming the permission was either given illegally or misunderstood. The "treasures of Machu Picchu," states David Ugarte, regional director of Peru's National Culture Institute (INC), were given to the American explorer "on loan."
Peru's tussle with the university is not a unique case. From the time Greece started demanding the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles in 1820, to last month, when Italy demanded that the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art give them back objects including the Euphronios Krater, a 500 BC vase, countries of origin have steadily grown more assertive about retrieving their cultural heritage.
"This is our patrimony. This is everything to us - proof that even though today we are poor, our ancestors lived great and proud," explains Mr. Ugarte. "Bingham said he was going to study those pieces and give them back. It was clear to all they were to be returned."
Yale claims in a Dec. 8 letter to Peru that "the civil code of 1852, which was in effect at the time of the Bingham expeditions, gave Yale title to the artifacts at the time of their excavation and ever since."
Colin Renfrew, professor of archeology at Cambridge University in England, says the key to resolving the case hinges on the answer to "what was the deal between Bingham and Peru at the time?" But the answer to that, he admits, "is very murky."
Peru claims that numerous, documented requests to return the pieces - or even negotiate the issue - starting in 1917, were ignored by Yale. "They always wrote back with different excuses - first they said they needed more time to evaluate the pieces, then, in later years, said they were studying our requests for the return," says Ugarte. But, now, with the 100th anniversary of the city's rediscovery coming up, he says, Peru has had enough.
President Alejando Toledo, the country's first indigenous president, who is set to leave office in July 2006, has - together with his anthropologist wife - made the retrieval of the objects a priority.
"Peru has notified Yale University President Richard Levin that a lawsuit is being prepared if its rights to the archaeological pieces are not recognized," Peru's Foreign Minister Oscar Maurtua announced on Nov. 30. "We are convinced that we have sufficient proof to win in court." INC director Luis Guillermo Lumbreras has said the lawsuit would be filed in Connecticut state court in the next few months, but an international tribunal may make the final decision.
Yale, in its Dec. 8 letter, notes that it sent back some of the artifacts in 1922 (Peru concedes, but says these particular items were "worthless") and stresses that a long, costly lawsuit would be a mistake.
Instead, Barbara Shailor, Yale's deputy provost for the arts suggests a compromise: "We have proposed to collaborate with Peru in overseeing the return to Peru of a substantial number of the artifacts," writes Ms. Shailor. But just as Yale is willing to "...recognize the importance to the Peruvian people of ... the return of this patrimony," so, she would like Peru to "give honorable recognition to Yale for its stewardship of the collection for nearly a century, and in the scientific and scholarly contributions thereby made possible."
In 2003, Yale's Peabody Museum mounted a major exhibition of the artifacts that traveled the US, introducing the wonders of Machu Picchu to more than a million people - just as Bingham's books and articles about "The Lost City of the Incas" did close to a century ago.
Bingham had multiple theories about Machu Picchu: that it was a training ground for Inca priestesses; the last Inca stronghold abandoned as the Spanish invaded; or the city of origin of the Inca empire, which dominated South America from Colombia to Chile for about a century.
Experts now say Bingham got it wrong on all counts, and that Machu Picchu was a summer sanctuary of the Inca Emperor Pachacutec.
Yale points out that its efforts have helped make Machu Picchu South America's best-known archeological site, attracting half a million tourists a year.
The fight over the artifacts is compounded by the fact that each side claims the crates Bingham sent out contained something different. Peru says Yale has in its possession close to 5,000 pieces. And, while even Lumbreras has admitted the site had been ransacked many times over the centuries by the time Bingham got there - it is common to hear Peruvians talk about stolen "treasures."
"Who knows where other - better - pieces are?" says Mariana Mould de Pease, a historian of Peruvian heritage. "I want to know what Yale did between 1911 and 2003 when they mounted the exhibition? Where were all the pieces?"
Shailor says all this is "misleading."
"Yale has approximately 250 pieces of exhibitable quality," she writes. "Yale has no mummies, no gold objects, and only a small number of silver pieces."
Roger Atwood, author of "Stealing History," a book on antiquities looting in Peru, says it is clear Yale is "taking a cooperative attitude" and suggests Peru rely on "ethical persuasion" rather than the courts.
"The artifacts are ... the treasures of Peru's most famous pre-Colombian city," agrees Chris Heaney, a Yale graduate writing a book about the controversy. "On the other hand, Yale has taken care of these pieces for over 90 years.... They are not the 'bad guys' here. They are a well-meaning scientific organization, not looters."
Your analogy between looters and archeologists reflects the level of thought in your tag line, "outside a good dog, a book is your best friend. inside a dog it's too dark to read".
Have you thought about selling your pit bull to the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant and training your next dog differently than your present one?
That way, you won't have to worry about winding up inside your dog. And then you also won't have to try to remember a small LED to read by.
;-)
Sometimes looting is justified simply because its better than destruction but most of the time its just an exercise of power.
"As an aside, the British Museums treatment of its Egyptian artifacts is abominable. Priceless artifacts are left out for countless museum goers to rub their grubby fingers over them. I say send them back."
Remember the care given to a truely irreplacable statue by the ultimate in Turd World curators, the Taliban?
Huh?
To equate the British Museum with most any Turd World facility is hoefully a typo on your part. If not, you should consider having your meds adjusted at once.
"Grubby" fingers are a far cry from the Taliban's C-4 preservation ideology and methodology.
I don't care where they're displayed, or even if.
If you can find narratives of the Elgin Marbles, for instance, written before PC revisionism became endemic, you will find, in plain language, that they were purchased in a quarry (!) where they were scheduled to be ground for the lime and plaster.
In the context of the time, they were sold by the then owners the Turks *.
Judging events of 200 years ago by comtemporary Political Correctness is the triumph of ignorance, and a waste of time.
* In 1801 Elgin obtained a firman , or authority, from the Sultan which gave him permission to take away any sculptures or inscriptions which did not interfere with the works or walls of the citadel.
"The Egyptians, Greeks and Peruvians are capable of acting as curator as well as we are."
"Capable", conceivable but not demonstrated.
And what of the sheer national instabilities in those places? At any time, in any Islamic nation, some whacko may destroy any statue or any artifact with an image on it.
Peru has always been a land of theft where the strongest took what they wanted. Far more artifacts have been "looted" by locals needing a bit of money, and far more sites ruined by said locals, than by archeologists from the First World.
Might I ask why you seem to insist that backward places are equally safe repositories as major Western facilities?
You bagged 'em right between the eyes.
But, then again, perhaps the cranium was uninhabited at the time?
Out fellow FReeper must have sent his brain out for coffee.
;-)
Go Incas! Boola Boola, give them the Moola!
Don't give the Peruvians jack. They didn't invest in sweat toil effort and smarts to recover these treasures. Yale should keep them where they'll be safe and exhibited. I reject this anti-colonialism narrative. The Spanish controllers of Peru should have done the hard work but they didn't, Yale did
My reasoning is that those are Inca treasures and part of the heritage of the Peruvian descendants of those Incas. I don't believe wanting treasures that belonged to your ancestors is whining. I don't know the circumstances under which these treasures were given away or sold, but given the history of most of latin america there was probably a lot of corruption involved and I suspect whoever bought them for Yale was aware of it. I don't doubt that legally they belong to Yale, but I think Yale would be well served by giving them back. Further, would no the treasures have a lot more value in a museum at Machu Pichu where they could be viewed in the context of the ruins?
Given the history of South America, how long would those artifacts remain on display? We are talking about a culture steeped in corruption, after all.
As far as ". I don't doubt that legally they belong to Yale, but I think Yale would be well served by giving them back." I can only to Liberals would there be any "social justice value" in such a give away.
Giving artifacts to the non-Western is like giving Kennowick Man back to the American Indians. Except that the Indians are of a gene pool that arrived only some 6,000 years ago, whereas Kennowick Man was almost 10,000 years old.
Come to think of it, the Goron tried to force giving Kennowick Man back and the scientific world sued and won.
Let 'em find their own artifacts. Meanwhile, let 'em whine to the Goron.
Agreed.
Yale is awful, but isn't "a totalitarian society of unimaginable brutality and cruelty" going a bit too far ...
Not so sure, about the "good stonemasonry" either. Could Yale really have built this themselves? If it's not a natural rock formation, perhaps it dates from an earlier culture.
My tag line quote from Mark Twain is a play on words. My post about looting archeologists was spoken forthrightly. :-)
Archeologists show up, document and then steal everything they can, publish papers for personal career advancements and as fodder for selling books and for prestige. They often, but not always, turn over their artifacts to private or public collections.
Looters show up and steal and then sell to private or public collectors.
Other than the public information that is made available, there is little difference between looters and archeologists other than the letters after their names. The artifacts are preserved and end up in collections - some private and some public. Even private collections are willed to public institutions quite frequently.
Oh, there is one more difference that comes to mind. Looters know what their motives are.
BTW, my dog is a bulldog...
ampu
"Yale is awful, but isn't "a totalitarian society of unimaginable brutality and cruelty" going a bit too far ... "
Depends on whether you are a Princeton or Harvard man.
;-)
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