ABSTRACT

This volume examines the way objects and images relate to and shape notions of temporality and history. Bringing together ethnographic studies from the Lowlands of Central and South America and Melanesia, it explores the temporality inhering in images and artefacts from a comparative perspective. The chapters focus on how peoples in both regions ‘live in’ and ‘navigate’ time each through their distinctive systems of images and the processes and actions by which these come to be manifest in objects. With original theoretical and ethnographic contributions, the book is valuable reading for scholars interested in visual and material culture and in anthropological approaches to time.

part I|64 pages

Attending to time

chapter 2|17 pages

The living shape of time

Time and technics in the case of Abulës-speakers yams

chapter 3|21 pages

The lost writing and the drawn thought

Shamanic reflections on knowledge and temporality among the Marubo (Western Amazonia)

part II|63 pages

Navigating possible worlds

chapter 4|23 pages

Primeval skins: the rugged and the smooth surface

Cultural keynotes and accords in the Middle Sepik, Papua New Guinea

chapter 5|19 pages

A meditation on time

Pattern and relational ontologies in Northwestern Amazonia

part III|48 pages

Moving between intersecting worlds

chapter 7|20 pages

Changing houses

Architectural transformations in the Ecuadorian Amazon

chapter 8|18 pages

Returned not remade

Visuality, authority and potentiality of digital objects in a Melanesian Society

chapter |8 pages

Epilogue

Images, ritual action, and deep time