NOGALES, ARIZONA
Homeland Security Today reports that U.S. Homeland Security special agents handed over more than 150 artifacts recovered during two separate investigations to officials at the Mexican Consulate. Ten of the objects, ceramics thought to have originated in the western states of Nayarit, Jalisco, and Colima, have been dated to between 100 B.C. and A.D. 500. Other artifacts recovered at the border include arrowheads, ax heads, hammers, spearheads, and figurines dated to between 1,000 and 5,000 years ago. “This repatriation comes at an opportune time, in the year of a very significant commemoration for Mexico, the 500th anniversary of the taking of Tenochtitlan,” commented José Luis Perea González of Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH). To read about heavily tattooed figures found in western Mexican shaft tombs, go to Ancient Tattoos: Hollow Ceramic Figurines.
US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) returned 277 pre-Columbian objects to the Mexican consulate in Nogales, Arizona, in a repatriation ceremony on Tuesday Photo: courtesy of INAH
Ending two separate investigations of suspected smuggled Mexican artefacts, officials from the US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) returned 277 pre-Columbian objects to the Mexican consulate in Nogales, Arizona, in a repatriation ceremony on Tuesday.
The first, and largest, group of 267 items were first confiscated by Customs and Border Patrol in October 2012, from two Mexican citizens who entered the US at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogale. Archaeologists were then asked to examine the collection of arrowheads, tools, and small stone carvings, and they were dated as between 1,000 and 5,000 years old. The Mexican Institute for Anthropology and History estimated that the total value of the artefacts was roughly $124,000.