A chamber brimming with museum-quality artifacts was discovered in Santiago de Compostela. Among the pieces were several items that had gone missing from an exhibition on the 4,000-year-old Moche Lords of Sipan tombs in Peru:

Police, tipped off by Peru, tracked the trove down in a privately owned, reinforced chamber in the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela, the Interior Ministry said.

More than 30 of the 1,800 items were identified as belonging to Peru’s 4,000-year-old Moche Lords of Sipan tombs, officials said.

Peru had alerted Spanish authorities it suspected that items missing from a 1997 pre-Inca exhibition were being held illegally in Spain, the ministry said. Peruvian authorities had lost track of the priceless pieces — as well as the exhibition’s organizer, an unnamed Costa Rican citizen.

Those ticos are so wily! We’re still going to blame the Spanish though, because we’ve yet to fully forgive them for unleashing “Asereje” onto the world. And forcing us to dance to it. Alone. In our rooms. For months.

Missing Peruvian pre-Incan gold artifacts found in treasure-filled hideout in Spain [International Herald Tribune]