A show of ample and eerie majesty: British Museum's Peru: A Journey in Time reviewed

Growing up on a farm outside Lima, I was aware that indigenous Peruvians did not understand time in the same way that their white countrymen did. On our visits to the highlands, we would encounter a very different mode of thinking. Ask an Andean villager where the next settlement was and you’d be told, ‘aquisito no más’ — just over here. Whether ‘aquisito’ meant around the next bend or four days’ schlep across the mountains was, for aboriginal people, a meaningless question. They were not ruled, as their European-descended neighbours were, by clocks. You’d sometimes see Quechua-speaking herdsmen sitting motionless for so long that they seemed to have switched off and become part of the landscape.

Peru: A Journey in Time sounds like one of those generic names chosen by committee. But the title encapsulates what the British Museum’s display is all about. Yes, you will see rich and wonderful treasures here. There are ingenious works of pottery: warriors and gods, contorted animals and couples having sex. There are gorgeous textiles, many of them designed for ritual use and depicting metaphysical realms. There are feathered tunics, exquisite earrings, mummified sacrificial cadavers, a tiny and perfect golden llama. But these items have not been chosen for their beauty. They are here to help us appreciate a different conception of the universe.

This gives you a better sense of indigenous Peru than you will find anywhere outside that country

The exhibition has been more than a decade in the making, and it shows. Nothing here feels contrived. Dozens of collections from around the world, public and private, have been surgically ransacked. Their riches augment several items in the British Museum’s own hoard that are not normally on display. The result is a thoughtful and occasionally gruesome miscellany that gives you a better sense of indigenous Peru than you will find anywhere outside that country.