La Jornada: The INAH already has the skull repatriated from the Netherlands under its protection

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reported yesterday that the pre-Hispanic skull with turquoise mosaic, repatriated a year ago from the Netherlands, is already under its protection. He also detailed that the Subdirectorate of Registry of Movable Archaeological Monuments carried out its public registration, inventory and three-dimensional registration.

The piece – as reported by the director of the institute, Omar Vázquez, on June 10 in the morning conference of President Claudia Sheinbaum (www.jornada.com.mx/2026/07/ 11/cultura/a06n1cul) – was, for six decades, a prominent object in the World Museum (Wereldmuseum) in Leiden.

According to a statement from the INAH, the skull is partially covered with tesserae, like a mosaic, forming the schematic design of a snake on the frontal bone. The blue plates correspond to turquoise, while those with reddish and whitish tones – located between the eyebrows and in the eyes – are made of shell; Those preserved in the left ocular orbit and in the eye of the represented snake are made of jadeite and rock crystal, respectively.

Alejandro Bautista Valdespino, deputy director of the Registry of Movable Archaeological Monuments, announced that contact is maintained with those in charge of the Yucu Saa Community Museum, in Villa de Tututepec, Oaxaca – who have expressed interest in hosting this heritage asset -, in order to provide them with institutional guidance and ensure that they have the necessary conditions for its exhibition.

Regarding the piece, he explained that it was made with the technique that has been documented from the Late Postclassic period (1200-1521) in Mesoamerica, in regions that today occupy the states of Puebla and Oaxaca. However, it is not easy to determine the origin of the skull, because it was acquired by the Leiden Museum in 1962, on the art market, without further information about its origin.

Between 2011 and 2012, the Dutch site promoted a project, together with the French Museum Research and Restoration Center, with the purpose of determining its authenticity. The isotope, X-ray fluorescence and osteobiographic studies concluded that the skull belongs to a male individual between 25 and 40 years old, while the materials that make up the mosaic are also pre-Hispanic.

However, the presence of modern adhesive substances was identified, used in some areas of the skull to fix the tesserae, which may be due to a decorative rearrangement or reuse of the same by the original owner, before it was acquired by the museum.

For his part, the physical anthropologist Olaf Bello Cardoso, from the Directorate of Public Registry of Monuments and Archaeological and Historical Zones (DRPMZAH) of the INAH, considered it viable to obtain samples of his DNA. “From anthropology, in addition to performing physical analysis, it is important to decipher who the person behind the mosaic is,” as well as decipher what the intention was to decorate it.

At the end of 2023, the federal Secretariats of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and Culture were notified of a first contact between the Dutch museum and the Mexican embassy in that country; However, it was not until December 2024 when the European government, through the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, completed the return.

The transfer of the heritage asset was made official in May 2025, after which it was delivered, by elements of the SRE’s legal consultancy, to DRPMZAH personnel, who safeguarded it and prepared an archaeological opinion that, based on the photographic evidence provided by the Mexican embassy in the Netherlands and on the analysis of the osteological and stylistic characteristics, “concluded that it is a pre-Hispanic human bone remains, from national. With this, the formal request for restitution was supported.”

During the registration process in the Public Registry, special packaging was prepared for proper handling, carried out by the museographic assembly technician José Mejía Lozano, assigned to the National Coordination of Museums and Exhibitions. Likewise, photographer Christian Esparza Espinosa, collaborator of the aforementioned subdirectorate, generated the first three-dimensional digital model of the skull.