The International Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture opened yesterday in the city of Cusco, Peru. The event marks the end of a long-running dispute over a collection of antiquities taken from Machu Picchu by Yale explorer Hiram Bingham nearly 100 years ago. It's also the beginning of a collaborative partnership between Yale and the National University of San Antonio Abad del Cusco .
Speaking to reporters in Cusco, Yale researcher Lucy Salazar explained that museum is housed in a historic Inca palace called the Casa Concha.
"Underneath this house, we have the palace of Inca Tupac Yupanqui, so it's very nice that this Bingham collection return to this house, this palace in Cusco."
The Museum will display ceramics, jewelry and human bones that have been at the Peabody Museum in New Haven for nearly a century. In 2008, Peru sued Yale to get them back. Last November, the university announced it would return the collection.
There will be collaborative research by scholars, faculty and students in both directions. Oscar Paredes, director of the Department of Social Sciences at the University in Cusco says that’s the kind of collaboration that advances human knowledge.
"Ese conocimiento tiene que estar al servicio de todo los hombres de la humanidad. La Universidad es uno en el mundo, pero tenemos que dialogar"
He says, knowledge should serve all humanity. There is really just one university in the world, but we have to be able to talk to one other.
The museum-quality artifacts are now in Peru. The remaining objects at Yale will return to Peru by the end of 2012.
