68 Archeological Pieces Were Repatriated to Ecuador from Italy

In 2009, the Italian police (Carabinieri) seized antiquities in Turin. The Ecuadorian authorities were asked to identify the historical material and right away after that the process of repatriation began. On May 25th, the Italian Government returned 68 archeological pieces to Ecuador.

The event took place in the city of Rome in the ILLA (Italo-Latin American Institute) and it was part of a bilateral relation between the two executives and compliance with existing international agreements in the framework of UNESCO and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

The National Institute of Ecuador’s Cultural Heritage (INPC) made ​​the process of identifying parts, determining that they correspond to the cultures of central and northern coast of the country and some of them to the mountainous northern region, which were developed at various chronological periods such as the Formative (1500 BC to 500 BC),Regional Development (500 BC to 500 AD) and Integration (500 AD to 1500 AD).

Official sources reported that in addition to the pieces found in Italy, authorities are making efforts to retrieve relevant Ecuadorian historical material that has been detected, thanks to investigations and allegations of entities related to the archeology and other nations, including Argentina, Italy, and Germany.

Source: El Telegrafo Newspaper