Dissertation: Reconfiguring the Archaeological Sensibility: mediating heritage at Teotihuacan, Mexico: Teotihuacan Social Survey

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The social survey portion of the project is to assess how differential conceptual frameworks of a single archaeological site predispose alternate engagements and understandings. This forms part of opening archaeology up to more diverse interests aside from restricted, disciplinarian interests. A premise of this dissertation is that such a provincial attitude on the part of archaeologists and other specialists is no longer tenable in a context of Global Heritage, UNESCO-ICOMOS and more localized, idiosyncratic interests in the 'past'.

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Satellite Image (NASA) showing proximity of archaeological zone to surrounging 5 communities: San Lorenzo, San Juan, San Martin, San Francisco, San Sebastian.

To get at such abstract concepts informing disparate engagements with archaeological locales, I have hypothesized Five major factors (based upon initial test questionnaires and ethnography in the vicinity of Teotihuacan, Mexico): 1)Economics, 2)Heritage (Patria in Mexico), 3)Spirituality, 4)Diversion/Entertainment, 5)Archaeological Science.

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Schematic of survey's methodology and design

See Overview of Social Survey for a synopsis of the current state of the project.

Y para un resumen en español véase Resumen del Proyecto.

See the files below for the questionnaire (in English and Spanish) and codebook as well as an continually revised data set (coded):

Document Icon Consent Form Questionnaire-HumanSubjectsProtocol.doc

Document Icon Consent Form Interview-Human Subjects Protocol.doc

Document Icon Consent Form Cuestionario-Protocolo para sujetos.doc

Document Icon Consent Form entrevista.doc

Uploaded Image The answers to the 36 questions - multiple-response and open/closed format (Questionnaires/Cuestionarios) - have been pre-coded and statistical analysis is being conducted primarily in EXCEL with statistical plug-ins as well as SPSS. (I used Cronbach's alpha (>0.7) to test for 'reliability'/'item-to-item', and an alpha of >0.3 to test for 'unidimensionality'/'item-to-scale' to insure these questions measure the intended concepts). Developing first the descriptive statistics of the surveyed sample frame, I will be able to utilize inferential statistics to evaluate my hypothesis with regard to the significance of each of the posited informing concepts. This is done utilizing basic measure of association (co-efficients) on bi-variate and multi-variate analyses to determine the strenght of relationships between the informing values and concepts of the past - archaeology for economic pursuits, archaeology as integral component of personal identity/heritage, spiritual/new-age use of the past, archaeology simply as diversion, and archaeology as scientific accretion of data/knowledge - held by those engaging with archaeological materiality and background structural factors.

For the preliminary Descriptive Statistics (Excel): Document Icon TeoQuest-Recoded-wcode.xls(*may take a few minutes-3.6mg)

For the codebok of the project (word): Document Icon Codebook-TeoQuestionnaire.doc(*may take a few minutes-3.6mg)

See the Statistical Resources utilized by the project.

The breadth of coverage afforded by the social survey will be deepened through interviews conducted with local archaeologists, politicians and traditional community leaders. In works are the digitzed transcripts of interviews and podcasted originals.

Please visit Archaeography for continually updating images of the fieldwork.

For the latest from Archaeography.com

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Uploaded Image The relevance of the survey has been underscored by the recent construction of a Walmart within the 'Perimeter C' zone (afforded minimal protection and oversight by the Instituto Nacional Antropologia e Historia) of the archaeological site, 2.5km from the pyramid of the sun. Dubbed contentiously 'TeotihuaWalmart', I have archived all of the local paper articles covering the topic between July-November 2004 during the height of the controversy. These will be intertwined with the social survey data and collected ethnographic material to span a broad range of 'social data' relevant to perceptions of Teotihuacan.

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