The Architecture of Fear: Archaeological Evidence of Fear’s Influence on Built Environments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The influence of fear on our interactions with each other and the world around us is ubiquitous. Despite this, it can be challenging to recognize its effects in the archaeological and historical record. However, built environments create enduring physical evidence and their elements reflect the cultural fears of their makers. This evidence is multiscalar, occurring in various forms from domestic vernacular architecture to large municipal constructions. The intensity of the fear integrated into architecture can also vary, ranging from simple protection from the elements to existential fears at a societal scale. This paper will focus on examples of cultural-scale fears that past societies were addressing in their architecture and connect it to more recent and contemporary cases. It will discuss some of the ways archaeologists can identify and study the role of cultural fears through analyses of built environments in the archaeological record and provide case examples of how fear can influence and be reflected in the architecture of diverse cultures in the past and present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38253.0