Blurb:

This chapter critically discusses the complexity of identifying, protecting, and documenting Mexico's diverse cultural heritage that contributed to forming the national identity and collective memory in post-colonial time. By discussing various efforts and challenges entailed in protecting pre-Hispanic settlements and historic colonial centers, this contribution provides a critical lens into understanding the sense of urgency related to the protection of this diverse cultural heritage and the important role assigned to its architectural and archaeological documentation. More specifically, this chapter discusses how new digital recording methods provide a more complete, accurate, and objective representation of Mesoamerican architecture than previous analog methods. The author's work in Mexico provides examples of enhancing the preservation of at-risk Mesoamerican architecture by developing documentation standards that proved to be less dependent upon the surveying's subjective quality. The chapter concludes that new digital documentation records that follow cutting-edge standards regarding data capture and digital documentation preservation provide a viable contribution to addressing the sense of urgency in protecting cultural heritage.