Uncoupled, quasi-static and linear thermoviscoelastic problems are analyzed in time domain by the finite element approximation which is developed using the principle of virtual work and viscoelasticity matrices instead of shear and bulk relaxation functions as in usual formulations. The material is assumed to be isotropic, homegeneous and thermorheologically simple, which means that the temperature-time equivalence postulate is effective. The stress-strain laws are expressed by relaxation-type hereditary integrals. In spatial and time discritizations, isoparametric quadratic quadrilateral finite elements and linear time variations are adopted. For explicit derivations, the viscoelastic material is assumed to behave standard linear solid in shear and elastically in dilatation. Two-dimensional examples are solved under general temperature distributions T = T(x, t), and compared with other opproximate solutions to show the versatility of the presented analysis.