(Mexico City) Mexico has received 428 archaeological pieces belonging to ancient cultures in the north of the country, which had been seized by US authorities, the Ministry of Culture announced on Tuesday.
Posted at 9:34 p.m.
The set “dates from the late post-classic period (the years 900 to 1600) and is associated with human groups from desert cultures who settled in the territories now occupied by the northern states of Mexico and of the southern United States,” the department said in a statement.
The objects were seized by US customs and handed over to the Mexican consulate in Portland, Oregon (west), the ministry said, without specifying the circumstances in which they were confiscated.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then handed over to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) these pieces, including flint projectile points and scrapers, shell and bone artifacts, as well as two knives which have retained their original handle.
These objects “are representative of semi-nomadic communities of hunter-gatherers”, said Alejandro Bautista, archaeologist and deputy director of the registration of archaeological monuments at the INAH, quoted in the press release.
Last week, Mexico had recovered 2,522 pre-Hispanic objects from a family in Barcelona (Spain).
The left-wing Mexican government has made the recovery of the national heritage dispersed abroad the major axis of its cultural policy.
Lopez Obrador’s government has recovered 8,970 pre-Hispanic objects since taking office in December 2018.