Teotihuacan Statistical Survey

The goal of the statistical survey of Teotihuacan is to provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the principal associations formed through the nexus of an archaeological site. Previous ethnographic studies of heritage and the disciplinary wrangling over whether and how to involve indigenous and other interested non-specialists into archaeological practice discussed in Chapter 1 convincingly demonstrate that ‘the past is no longer past’ at archaeological sites. These locales often become the intersection of contemporary issues ranging from political legitimization to economic sustainability and spiritual valorization. Indeed, we would expect any significant locus of the archaeological imaginary, such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites (UNESCO 2007), to present all or a combination of these issues. For instance, the political and religious rancor over the Ayodhya site in India (Bernbeck 1996), the new age druidic rites at Stonehenge (Bender 1998) or the struggle for Navajo management of Chaco Canyon (Watkins 2000:93-103) all exemplify the multifarious connections at sites of cultural heritage. Inscribed in 1987 as a World Heritage Site, Teotihuacan proves no exception to this expectation. Any particular facet of these expected entanglements with cultural heritage could usefully be further explored. Economically, it is estimated that as of 2003, 3,860 residents of the valley depend in part or whole upon the archaeological zone for income (Delgado 2005). With the valley’s population burgeoning due to the emigration from Mexico City (in 1975 the valley had 15,800 residents compared to upwards of 69,000 in 2003), this trend of economic dependence is projected to increase. Dovetailed with economic considerations are the entwined local, national and global political wranglings over preservation of the site as a symbol of Mexican integrity exhibited during the approval and construction phases of a Walmart within conservation boundaries ((Ross 2005) see this project’s digital archive of more than 60 Mexican newspaper articles concerning ‘Teoti-Walmart’ at http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/Teotihuacan/715). Religiously, Teotihuacan represents a syncretic crucible for a myriad of ‘new age’ or spiritualistic beliefs. These range from local, ‘traditional’ rites carried out on site or at traditional leaders’ residences in the valley, to national ‘Aztec revivalism’, pan-American ‘shaman gatherings’ held every six years at the site, to popular, international ‘new age’ authors’ guided tours of the sacred locations at Teotihuacan, and Gaia, feminist pilgrimages to celebrate the disputed Goddess of Teotihuacan.

Yet despite this wealth of archaeological and non-archaeological uses of Teotihuacan as cultural heritage, there remains no encompassing investigation of all of these associations, their relative prevalence, importance, and inter-relationship, and the underlying factors accounting for their development. By sampling the opinions of ‘new agers’, workers, students, and visitors to the site, as well as local residents, an attempt has been made by this survey to understand on the broad scale how all of these various social groups engage with Teotihuacan. If, as has been argued in this dissertation, archaeology’s principles of evaluating knowledge claims are not incompatible with non-specialist uses of archaeological material, as both fundamentally operate according to value-driven, pragmatic goals of knowledge, then it is necessary to better understand what these non-archaeological values are and to what extent they involve specific associations. The hope of this study is to provide just such a benchmark evaluation. What can we reliably say about these associations beyond an anecdotally apparent basis? While agencies, governmental, institutional or private, charged with the management of heritage sites or museums regularly poll the opinion of visitors, these surveys focus upon visitation habits and consumption of information (for a discussion see the chapters in Merriman 2004b). They tend not to take a critical approach to the heritage information provided, overlooking how and to what degree multiple publics may engage with the same material or information in a creative manner, forming strong associations outside the purview of an archaeological framework. Moreover, they restrict themselves to actual visitors, neglecting how those living and working near heritage sites are intimately involved on a daily basis in an archaeologically generated economy. In Mexico, even these visitor surveys are rare (Olivé Negrete 1988), and until this project began, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) had not undertaken a survey at Teotihuacan, one of its largest and most visited archaeological sites (though in 2005 during this project I assisted INAH in formulating a pilot questionnaire for Teotihuacan, see footnote 2).

Providing the first systematic study of a single large heritage site, the upside will be to better understand associations created through archaeological material. Such an understanding will not only benefit the discipline at large in the ethical push for public engagement and involvement, but may specifically aid heritage managers, particularly those in governmental agencies specializing in overseeing public access to archaeological sites. The downside to the study is that useful comparisons with other similarly focused studies, in terms of content and design, will be limited . In keeping with the goals outlined, this chapter will: 1) identify the primary associations of the archaeological zone and visitors and residents of the valley; 2) once identified, assess the nature of these associations in terms of relative importance, prevalence, and their inter-relationships (are they exclusive, mutually informing or constraining); 3) infer the causal factors responsible for these associations in terms of background factors (income, educational level, level of involvement with the zone, and so forth).

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Containments

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