Time and the Aztec Mind -
The Aztec Calendar Sun Stone in Context.
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As such, this site focuses on the Aztec Calendar Sun Stone itself and includes a short, general introduction to the Aztec civilisation, it's history and archaeology.
However, the main emphasis of the project is a deeper study into what the stone (and time itself) represents on a greater scale within Aztec art, sculpture, religion, and world view.
This concept of time and cosmology will also be discussed in the greater context of the way in which it is symbolic of Aztec Society and Civilisation.
Further, as much as is possible, chronicles, manuscripts, texts and images will be used to illuminate these themes, and also to give an insight into the time and people.
"The arrangement of time governed all important activities of individual life as well as the scheduling and performance of state-organised events. Like many other peoples of antiquity in the New World and the Old, the Aztecs did not experience time as a succession of uniform movements, stretching monotonously from the indefinite past into the indefinite future. Nor was their time of indifferent uniform quality. It would be impossible to overstress the fact that time for the Aztecs was full of energy and motion, the harbinger of change and always charged with a sense of miraculous happening. The cosmogenic myths reveal a preoccupation with the process of creation, destruction and recreation, and the calendrical system reflected these notions about the character of time."Townsend, R.F., The Aztecs, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994.
