The measure and meaning of time in Mesoamerica and the Andes : proceedings of symposium / Anthony F. Aveni, editor.

"Volume based on papers presented at the Pre-Columbian studies symposium The Measure and Meaning of Time in the Americas, held at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., on October 5-6, 2012"--Title page verso.

This volume brings together specialists in anthropology, archaeology, art history, astronomy, and the history of science to contemplate concrete and abstract temporal concepts gleaned from the Central Mexicans, Mayans, and Andeans. Contributors first address how people reckon and register time; they compare the western linear, progressive way of knowing time with the largely cyclic notions of temporality derived from the Americas, and they dissect, explain, and explore the origins of the complex dynastic and ritual calendars of the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs. They subsequently consider how people sense time and its moral dimensions. Time becomes an inescapable feature of the process of perception, an entity that occupies a succession of moments rather than the knife-edge present ingrained in our Western minds.