The temporal indications starts with the character「旹」. This character is a variant of 「時」 which is commonly used on Penghu.「旹」 or on other tombstones「旹在」 serve, similar to「歲次」,as denominator of the sexagenary calendar 天干地支. In our corpus, there is only one tombstone with「旹」 on Taiwan, all other tombstones featuring this character are located in Penghu and especially in Xiyu. The occurrences in Xiyu are earlier than those in Magong or Wangan.

「旹」的使用可作為一個有時間性的指標。「旹」,時的異體字,經常在澎湖地區被使用。其他墓碑上也見「旹在」,意思相同於「歲次」,可用來當作天干地支的起源。在我們的資料庫當中,使用「旹」的地區除了在台灣本島有一個之外,其都在澎湖地區,尤其是西嶼。「旹」出現在西嶼的時間早於出現於馬公或望安。