Peru

"This volume documents an exhibition at the British Museum. Organized in conjunction with the Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, the exhibition featured works mostly from the British Museum’s collection. Written by major scholars in Andean studies, the essays in the catalogue’s seven sections survey the development of high civilization in the central Andes over the four millennia prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Arranged chronologically, the essays detail the key cultures, ethnic and linguistic groups, and states and their artistic, intellectual, and practical achievements, the legacies of which inform Indigenous life to this day. Ceramic, metal, shell, stone, textile, and wood objects—here beautifully illustrated—and the engineering of agricultural terraces, irrigation systems, and road networks attest to Andean skill and sophistication. Throughout, the authors are sensitive to ways that culture shapes responses to other ways of being: it identifies and disarms contemporary prejudices and highlights distinctively Andean perspectives. Pardo (deputy director and curator of collections and pre-Columbian art, Museo de Arte de Lima) and Cooper (art and archaeology, Univ. of East Anglia, UK) deftly balance the material and the cultural, offering readers an excellent, well-written introduction to Andean peoples and traditions, past and present.

Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. ~E. Douglas, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, CHOICE, October 2022 Vol. 60 No. 2