Social Awareness of Archaeologically Significant Places in Colombo District

Abstract

Colombo district has long term historical background since pre-historic period. The main objective of this study is to identify the awareness of archaeologically significant places in Colombo district which can be further used for safeguarding archaeological significances, and tourism development programs. Adding values to the existing archaeological places in Colombo district is a specific objective of this study. There could be seen archaeological remains related to multi-ethnic community of Sri Lanka such as religious places, architectural constructions, etc. Colombo district is consists with the Divisional Secretariat Divisions of Colombo, Dehiwala, Homagama, Kaduwela, Kesbewa, Kolonnawa, Kotte, Maharagama, Moratuwa, Padukka, Ratmalana, Seethawaka, and Thimbirigasyaya. The population of the study is entire population of people in Colombo district. As the population has spread over a large geographical area, cluster sampling method has used in selecting the sample while identifying the 13 divisional secretariats as clusters. Furthermore, the sampling proceeds as two stages cluster sampling as selected divisional secretariat of Homagama has 81 Grama Niladari Divisions which allow selecting two stages cluster among them. Thereby, Galawilawatte South Grama Niladari Division has been selected as the target population which has 820 families. 200 families have been selected by randomly among the target population and the questionnaires were distributed via postal method and follow-ups have done in order to enhance the response rate. Therefore, this study is based on field research and library survey methods. Descriptive analysis, Chi-square tests and ANOVA were used to analyze data with the assistance of SPSS and Microsoft excel. The results of this study shows that the people lives in Colombo district are unaware about the existing archaeological places in Colombo district and regardless of the demographic characteristics such as gender, age, level of education, occupation, etc. people are unaware of archaeologically significant places in Colombo district. Therefore, there is a gap that can be filled by the relevant parties in both government and private sector to enhance the value and importance of these places while promoting new programs.