Yale University, the third-oldest U.S. college, has agreed to return Incan artifacts taken from Peru a century ago, Peru's President Alan Garcia said.
Ernesto Zedillo, a Yale professor and a former Mexican president, promised on Friday to return the artifacts, which were excavated by archaeologist and Yale professor Hiram Bingham from the Machu Picchu citadel in the southern Andes in 1912, Mr. Garcia said in statement dated Friday and posted on the presidential website.
Tom Conroy, a spokesman for Yale, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Peru will insist the items, which include bronze knives, silver jewelry and fragmented pottery, are returned starting in the first quarter of the new year, Mr. Garcia said. They will be kept at San Antonio Abad University in the southern Andean city of in Cuzco, where Yale researchers will be able to keep studying them, he said.
The government began seeking the pieces in the early 2000s.
Earlier this month, Mr. Garcia said the Peruvian government may sue to force the Ivy League school to return the artifacts.
Machu Picchu was built by Inca emperor Pachacutec in the mid-15th century, at the height of the empire. The stone citadel, which lies at an altitude of almost 8,000 feet, overlooks a forest 345 miles southeast of Lima.
First Published: November 21, 2010, 5:00 a.m.