Reconfiguring the archaeological sensibility: Mediating heritage at Teotihuacan, Mexico

My 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 increase public involvement in the archaeological study of cultural heritage; (3) new (digital) media and the related 'platform shift' in how archaeological information is represented. Two fundamental questions direct how the dissertation combines these concerns. The first involves how to integrate archaeological practice with emerging concerns over heritage management. The second, intimately connected to a reconsideration of how the discipline evaluates knowledge claims, involves investigating the specifics of how archaeological representations work as the medium for visualizing such knowledge.; Reviewing the literature concerning cultural heritage, I conclude that the current solution to fostering public inclusion in archaeology by focusing upon ethics is only a partial solution. Underlying ethics is a disciplinary epistemology incapable of incorporating the 'subjective' values and goals of stakeholders. Presenting the major 'epistemic settlements' which archaeological thinkers have developed, I conclude that not only do current positions, with particular regard to the evaluation of knowledge claims, fragment the discipline into a hyper-plural state of insular camps, but that the added worry of public inclusion further estranges these archaeological positions. I suggest that archaeology's epistemological traditions for evaluating knowledge claims must be reconfigured. Modernist thought and the dominance of a correspondence theory of knowledge is bankrupt. To redress both of these dilemmas, I present the 'third way' of pragmatist thought for evaluating knowledge claims, and suggest that such a pragmatic sensibility already operating within archaeology. This sensibility is non-epistemological and stresses mediation of diverse knowledge claims. Focusing upon mixtures of 'actants' in practice, we no longer need worry about epistemic correspondence of archaeologist to the archaeological. Instead, this process of mediation, not representation, involves the satisfaction of specific goals for archaeological inquiry and comprises the basis for adjudicating claims to know the past. By suspending epistemology and using pragmatic criteria of evaluation instead, archaeology retains a plurality of approaches which are no longer epistemologically incompatible.; The shift to the satisfaction of practical goals for archaeological practice allows for the integral inclusion of stakeholders. Through the systematic study of the multiple associations formed with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, 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. The research involved the collection of quantitative and qualitative data to explain what forms the 'heritage' of this important archaeological zone. This data mixes statistical information derived from an 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...