US museum head says Mexico should get Mayan jade
  By MARK STEVENSON
  Associated Press Writer

  The director of Harvard's Peabody Museum said Tuesday he wants to
  return about 50 ancient carved Mayan jade pieces to Mexico, almost a
  century after a U.S. consul dredged the artifacts from the sacred lake
  at the ruins of Chichen Itza.

  The artifacts were among hundreds of pieces taken to the United States
  by American consul Edward Herbert Thompson, who dredged up the bottom
  of the sacred lake between 1904 and 1910 to recover offerings
  deposited there by the Mayas.

  William Fash, director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
  Ethnology, said the idea would still have to be approved by
  authorities at the university and the museum, but that returning the
  artifacts could help scholars studying jade and jade-like stones which
  held both artistic and religious significance for the Mayas.

  "It is important, I think, for many of the jades to be studied here in
  Mexico by people who are now doing careful studies of jades," many of
  which were brought long distances to Chichen Itza in Mexico's southern
  Yucatan peninsula by ancient pilgrims, Fash told The Associated Press.

  Such pieces could say a lot about trade, commerce and artistic
  patterns in the pre-Hispanic world.

  The return of the artifacts - many of which were pieced together from
  fragments by famed researcher Tatiana Proskouriakoff before her death
  in 1985 - could also be displayed at a museum near the site where they
  were originally found.

  "This would be something I think they would be very pleased to
  exhibit," said Fash.

  He said it was part of a growing trend where museums are making
  arrangements to return pieces to their countries of origin in exchange
  for short term loans of other artifacts, noting that "in this way both
  institutions win."

  The Thompson collection has long been a bone of contention, along with
  another major artifact, a five-century-old feathered headdress that
  purportedly belonged to the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma. The headdress is
  held at Vienna's Ethnological Museum, which has never agreed to return
  it.

  The Mexican government accused Thompson of having taken the Mayan
  artifacts out of the country illegally and filed suit to have them
  returned, but those efforts were not successful. Thompson had bought
  the ranch that contained the ruins before dredging the lake.

  In the 1960s and 1970s, the Peabody museum did return two sets of
  artifacts, which Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and
  History said were rare surviving pieces of wood and gold.

  Fash said "the most valuable pieces were already returned."

  The remainder of the collection remains on display or in storage at
  the Peabody museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Many see the return of the Thompson artifacts as simple justice.

  Bill Mellish, a retired telecommunications employee from Saint Louis,
  Missouri, says he wants to return two Chichen Itza artifacts that
  Thompson gave to his grandmother, whose family were friends of
  Thompson.

  "It's the right thing to do," Mellish said.
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