Site Home > Symmetrical Archaeology > Reconfiguring the Archaeological Sensibility: Mediating Heritage at Teotihuacan, Mexico > Versions for "Dissertation Int...
Dissertation Introduction
My project is a systematic study of the multiple relations formed with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Teotihuacan, Mexico. The completed research involved the collection of quantitative and qualitative data to explain what forms the ‘heritage’ of this important archaeological zone. This data combines statistical information derived from a probabilistically administered questionnaire to a sample of archaeologists, local residents, visitors, employees, heritage managers and civic authorities, with more detailed ethnographic interviews and participant observation with these individuals in order to define the specific relationships comprising the heritage of Teotihuacan. Seven primary associations, along with their relative importance, were identified: local and national economic involvement; archaeological research; issues of identity construction; diversionary ‘recreation’; and religious or spiritual beliefs on a personal and traditional basis. Additionally, these components of the heritage of Teotihuacan were correlated with individuals’ background variables to posit causal factors responsible for these associations. Education, age, income, exposure to archaeological information, and type of employment were some of the principal factors underlying the development of heritage associations.
The ability to get specific about heritage is an important contribution to archaeology, anthropology, history and other disciplines concerned with the currency of the subject for understanding human behavior. We already have a sense that heritage is bound up with tradition, memory and our identity (Meskell 2002). That archaeological materials are a physical anchor for attaching and remembering tradition and meaning (Miller 2005). These processes have been well theorized. Personal and political examples have fleshed out this theorizing in the litigious contexts of Australia (Mulvaney 1991), Canada (Nicholas 1997) and the United States (Bray 2001, Mihesuah 2000). Importantly, considering these under-represented perspectives on ‘the past’ has questioned the notion of heritage as something ‘frozen’ in archaeological artifacts and landscapes, urging us to think of heritage as something lived, with very real consequences for the present (Layton 1989, 1989, Swidler 1997, Trigger 1980).
Indeed, there is an urgency to better understand heritage in relation to the interests of indigenous and stakeholder groups to legally mandate the right to interpret the past within non-Western, non-Scientific frameworks of understanding. This legal imposition is resulting in a controversy between ethics and knowledge that increasingly fragments archaeology into separate intellectual communities. This division splits scholars over inter-disciplinarian sentiments: those with humanistic leanings and those favoring an explicitly scientific approach. The divisive crux: how to balance the ethical imperative to incorporate non-archaeological interests without compromising an ‘objective’ rendering of the past. Yet, while raising important ethical considerations for the disciplines of anthropology (Biolsi 1993) and archaeology (Green 1984, Kintigh 1996, Watkins 2003), these high profile examples often emphasize the struggle over the control of heritage at the expense of offering an explanation as to just what it is and how it holds such sway over our emotions and intellectual debates.
This issue extends beyond the academic purview. Cultural Resource Management (CRM), or salvage archaeology, burgeons in those countries where development for the future threatens the heritage of the past (King 2000, Smith 2004). In order to mitigate effects to World Heritage, governmental policy (King 1998), international guidelines (ICOMOS 2004) and professional codes of ethics need to consider not only the physical consequences of development on archaeological materials, but, as a resource innervated by contemporary relationships, the potential impacts upon the ‘ecosystems’ formed through heritage. We therefore need to better understand the complexity of relationships comprising heritage to implement conservation policy.
Such a state of affairs is especially salient at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Receiving more tourists (nearly 4 million annually) than any other site in Mexico’s important archaeo-tourism industry, Teotihuacan is also caught up in the controversies over an installation of a Wal-Mart superstore within site boundaries, as well as a political restructuring of management policies in an effort to open the site to public interests (Franco y González Salas 1999, INAH 2004). During my research, hunger fasts, violent and peaceful protests, road blockades and spiritual (‘new age’) interventions characterized the public’s concern over the heritage of the archaeological site. Moreover, the site has historically, and continues to be, the venue for groundbreaking archaeological research projects (Millon 1992). Representing the first city in the new world, research into urbanization at the site contributes unique information to worldwide studies of the rise of civilization (Cowgill 1974, Robertson 2001). Teotihuacan, prominent in prehispanic belief as ‘the place where divinity is born’ (as the Aztecs called it), is, for the contemporary world, more important than ever. It is emblematic of the crisis posed by heritage for the discipline of archaeology.
Many issues are involved in mediating public involvement in heritage and archaeological practice. To address them, this dissertation project presents an argument combining three common matters of concern emerging in the discipline of archaeology: 1) new thinking in the philosophy of archaeology, 2) ethical and legal imperatives to broaden archaeological engagement with the public, 3) new (digital) media and the 'platform shift' in how archaeological information is rendered, archived and accessed. Two fundamental questions direct how my dissertation combines these concerns. The first involves how to integrate archaeological practice with emerging concerns over heritage management. I endeavor to answer the question of whether it is possible to maintain objective knowledge of the past while involving the subjective values and interests of heritage-minded non-specialists. The second, intimately connected to this reconsideration of how the discipline evaluates knowledge claims, involves investigating the specifics of how archaeological representations work as the medium for visualizing such knowledge.
In exploring these questions, this dissertation suggests that new perspectives on epistemology and new (digital) representational media may resolve the tension between ethical mandates for subjective inclusion and archaeological science. Drawing upon archaeological fieldwork with the Temple of the Feathered Serpent Excavation and Restoration Project, statistical results of a Teotihuacan Valley wide survey of private citizens and INAH professionals, and ethnographic material from local leaders and archaeologists, my dissertation data suggests that the polemic of subjectivity versus objectivity has been incorrectly framed. Not differentiating beforehand archaeologist/specialist from non-specialist, both groups emphasized practical results over subjective values or standards of objective representation. Contrary to the current polarized settlements in archaeological method and theory, favoring either humanistic (‘post-processual’) or avowedly scientific (‘processual’) platforms, I conclude that a nuanced, pragmatic sensibility is mutually supported both by how archaeologists currently work on-the-ground and by the values of local communities at archaeological sites. Integrating new, participatory media (particularly a wiki forum; see Appendix 4) into the project from the outset, a collaborative and dynamic representation of the project as it developed has been enabled, and accessibility and distribution of the results greatly enhanced.
The project is broken down into seven chapters. Chapter 1 presents the pressing, current dilemma for archaeology that drives this dissertation. Ethical mandates from professional organizations, legislation in several countries including Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and a general post-colonial, external mandate on the part of indigenous and local communities necessitate a reconfiguring of archaeology's current stance toward public involvement. At the core, these issues urge the discipline to integrate non-specialist concerns into archaeological practice. This dilemma has conventionally been framed as the need for greater public involvement versus the discipline's self-defined status as the arbiter or specialist of the past. This chapter argues that the dilemma is in fact more fundamental and therefore less tractable than presented in multivocal or post-colonial archaeology. Furthermore, on an archaeological level (not anthropological) of disciplinary practice, little progress has been made towards mediating these twin agendas. It is more fundamental because the dilemma, when dealt with head-on, pits the subjective and non-scientific knowledge and values of stakeholders against the discipline's identity as an objective knowledge producer of the past. It is less tractable because when the core obstacle to integrating public involvement is acknowledged to be a matter of epistemology, incorporation is either vehemently denounced in the discipline, or half-measures of multivocal pastiche are attempted which do not substantively address these extra-disciplinary mandates. After laying out the why for extra-disciplinarian involvement, this chapter identifies the inherent roadblock to such a practice of global cultural heritage management and concludes by clearing the ground for what must fundamentally be addressed to circumvent this dilemma (Chapter 2 and 3), and how this may be accomplished in practice (Chapter 3 and 5) at Teotihuacan (Chapters 4-7).
Chapter 2 builds off of the previous chapter by interrogating ‘the what’ of archaeological practice which forecloses integration of non-specialists. Chapter 2 presents a detailed historical assessment of 20th-century archaeology in order to establish the pervasive and central role of representation-as-correspondence. This is a general, but often implicit, form of epistemology. It nonetheless figures centrally in the discipline’s more developed theories of knowledge regarding objectivity and relativism. As such, representation-as-correspondence itself has often received little direct attention within the discipline. The burden of this chapter is to draw out examples in every historical and contemporary school of the discipline to demonstrate its taken-for-granted status. With representational correspondence identified as a source of the dilemma identified in Chapter 1, this chapter leads to the following, where the highly developed, contemporary forms of ‘epistemic settlements’ are evaluated and argued to be insufficient due to their reliance upon correspondence theories of truth.
Chapter 3 identifies the specific reasonings behind the prominent epistemological positions in the discipline and how, despite other virtues, they are incapable of resolving the specific issue of the heritage dilemma. I argue that analogously to the philosophical development of these ‘imported epistemologies’, these positions are based upon a dualistic, either/or framework, characteristic of a more general modernist thought. So that, based in correspondence, these various theories are formulated to avoid what is taken to be the only alternative: anarchic relativism. This chapter argues that these settlements are incapable of resolving the heritage dilemma as their epistemologies are too correspondence based, offering little maneouvering between limited alternatives. Additionally, these positions, while often not explicitly championed, disperse the discipline into a hyper-plural state as they generate mutually exclusive ‘camps’, or research traditions, bound by informal acceptance of operating epistemologies.
The chapter then argues for how these difficulties may be remedied. My argument is that we should extend a sensibility already operating within archaeology to resolve both of these dilemmas. This sensibility is non-epistemological and pragmatic. By suspending epistemology and using pragmatic criteria of evaluation instead, archaeology retains a plurality of approaches which are no longer epistemologically incompatible. Finally, the shift to the values of practical outcomes for archaeological practice allows for the integral inclusion of stakeholders. Epistemology closes-down archaeology as a discipline of ‘no’, while practical outcome, as we shall see at Teotihuacan (Chapter 6), 7), forms the basis of a series of non-epistemological values held by these inheritors of world archaeology.
Chapter 4 introduces the archaeology and history of Teotihuacan. Due to its material complexity and current status as a Word Heritage Site, Teotihuacan has historically been the venue for both groundbreaking archaeological projects and celestial celebrations. For example, similar to other prominent archaeological sites around the world, Teotihuacan looms large in 'new age' or spiritual practices and references. Unfortunately, aside from a few anthropologists or social archaeologists, inadequate attention has been paid to these sites as material networks for popular culture. This is especially surprising at Teotihuacan, given that it has been a cornerstone of 'myth building' from pre-Conquest pilgrimages and oracles to 20th-century identity politics and continuing today (Chapter 6).
To introduce the site and demonstrate that such a dilemma of heritage is particularly relevant to Teotihuacan, I discuss the historical engagement with Teotihuacan from pre-Contact records to UNESCO listing, as well as the major archaeological projects and trends and present excavations. In particular, I discuss the site in relation to the long historical traditions of visually representing the metropolis. Making maps at the site over the course of five centuries offers the unqiue opportunity to demonstrate how the correspondence theory of truth, or knowing-through-representing what is there, is quite peculiar to the modern era. Through examining the goals informing the long tradition of mapping the urban center, I underscore the diverse array of reasons for representing Teotihuacan, as well as the practical outcomes of these representations for local residents, putting in relief the site’s emblematic status as a crossroads between representational epistemology and considerations of non-archaeologists.
Chapter 5 argues that new media is the ideal pragmatic tool for integrating non-specialists into heritage management. As collaborative tools, this media is ‘wired’ to allow dispersed participation and augments distribution of research. I demonstrate the benefits both discipline wide and specific to this project of integrating new participatory media (particularly wiki forums) into heritage management projects. This is not simply a quirky juxtaposition of academic and technological trends either. As postprocessual and critically reflexive archaeologists convincingly contextualized the practice of the discipline within a larger cultural sensibility, the how, what and why of archaeology cannot be insulated from informing socio-economic, political and ideological values and structures. A few of these contextualizing arguments paid reference to technology as a component of these rubrics (such as the Fordist production-line, deeply capitalist values of efficiency and control resonant in the discipline's uptake of positivist epistemology). What I conclude is that technology, specifically ‘social software’, increasingly constitutes such a pervasive and powerful influence on society - a transcoding of computer culture onto all other facets of life - not to mention on how scholarship itself operates, that it ought to receive undivided attention.
Chapter 6 presents the design and analytical methods utilized in my dissertation and present the rationale for the research. Despite the 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. A seven-page questionnaire consisting of 37 open and closed format questions was designed for a statistical survey to measure the range of associations formed by the public and professionals with Teotihuacan. By sampling the opinions of ‘new agers’, workers, students, archaeologists 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. Augmenting participant observation and pre-survey interviews, the statistical survey’s goal was to break down the ambiguous concept of ‘heritage’ into these specific associations, and to allow quantitative comparison and causal inference concerning the primary factors responsible for these associations. The questionnaire was administered using a stratified-systematic sampling procedure to permit generalization to the population of the valley and the ‘population’ of Teotihuacan visitors as a whole. A total of 471 questionnaires were collected using this sampling technique, granting a confidence level of 95%.
Chapter 7 presents the results of the survey and ethnographic interviews, emphasizing in form and content the mutual enrichment of qualitative and quantitative data. Seven major associations or primary goals for Teotihuacan were identified: the archaeological, the economic (on a personal and national scales), the diversionary, the spiritual (in terms of perceived healing benefits and ‘irrational’ beliefs), as well as heritage in a more restricted sense of symbolic identity. Additionally, more than simply identifying the primary associations, tentative causal factors have been offered as how and why individuals take part in these associations. How do personal variables relate to the goals that individuals form with archaeological sites? For many of the associations, simple ‘exposure’, to the material of the site and artifacts themselves, to archaeological information and experts, and to popular media plays the most determining role. For others, factors such as gender and education are paramount. The public and professional groups included in the survey emphasized pragmatic satisfaction of these seven major associations with the site over concerns for subjective values or standards of objective representation. In conclusion, the project highlighted the shared goals for cultural heritage on the part of archaeologists and the public. Such a ‘pragmatic sensibility’ can function to integrate specialists and non-specialists around multiple, identifiable goals, which, while predisposed by different personal and contextual circumstances, disband the former (troubling) distinction between ethical practice and epistemological practice. Finally, it is hoped that results of the systematic study may be related to other prominent sites of the archaeological imagination.
Forward to Chapter 1: World Heritage and the Inheritance of World Archaeology