After nearly a year of negotiations, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has agreed to return a rare fourth-century B.C. gold funerary wreath to Greece that cultural officials there contend was illegally removed from Greek soil. The museum, which bought the artifact in 1993, reached its decision in recent days after new information came to light about the wreath's likely origin, an expert briefed on the talks said Sunday. On Monday, the museum director, Michael Brand, said during a news conference in Athens that the museum had reached an agreement in principle on the return of two objects, and a statement added that a formal agreement would be signed soon, The Associated Press reported. The other object was a marble statue, it said. The accord followed weeks of growing scrutiny of the museum's acquisition of the wreath, to which Greece first sought claim in the late 1990s. In November, Greek prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation of Marion True, the former antiquities curator at the Getty, focusing on her involvement in the purchase. For years the precise site of the wreath's excavation had been unclear. But this month Greek officials sent the Getty a new dossier of evidence, including documents and photographs, to support their claim that it had been found in Greece. The Greek police say they now have evidence that the funerary wreath was dug up by a farmer in 1990 near Serres, in northern Greece, and passed on to the art market through Germany and Switzerland before being sold to the Getty in 1993. A Getty Museum catalog identifies the delicate floral decorations on the wreath as "plants that grow profusely in Northern Greece," suggesting it may have been created in the region. It remains unclear how a resolution of the claim for the wreath could affect the Greek legal investigation of several people involved in the sale of the wreath, including True, the former Getty curator. In an interview last week in New York, the Greek culture minister, Georgios Voulgarakis, stressed that the Greek judiciary was independent from the government, and that his talks with the Getty and other museums did not hinge on any legal proceedings in progress. Nevertheless, he said that once the negotiations were resolved, "we can discuss everything." Greece had also claimed the second item, a sixth-century B.C. marble kore, or statue of a young woman, acquired by the Getty. That object is believed to have been made on Paros, a Greek island, but Greece's request for its return had been complicated by its appearance on a separate list of 52 objects that Italy asked back from the Getty in January. In recent weeks Italian officials have indicated that they are prepared to drop their competing claim for the kore.