RAUMNORM – Legal spaces and normativity from late antiquity to the Middle Ages

Research Project

The interdisciplinary RAUMNORM project unites researchers from the fields of history, archaeology, legal history, art history and genomics, and has two main focuses: one practical and one theoretical. The practical focus aims to examine the genesis of cultural landscapes from the Rhine-Main region northeastward to the Elbe, from prehistory to the High Middle Ages, drawing on the widest possible range of sources, including both Traditionen and Überreste (that is, sources transmitting information to posterity either intentionally – traditions – or unintentionally – remnants) as defined by Bernheim in 1908. What conclusions can be drawn regarding cultural connections, ethnic migrations, cultural transfer and the formation of norms over the longue durée? How do the hypotheses derived from the individual disciplines complement or contradict one another?

The theoretical focus concerns methodology: from the outset, the project’s hermeneutics must address fundamental questions about working with large and diverse datasets:

• Is it possible to capture temporal dynamics, and can these be differentiated?
• Is it possible to capture the influence of natural environmental conditions?
• Is it possible to capture the different eras’ ‘political’ framework conditions in terms of enabling or obstructing opportunities (Chancen in the sense of Max Weber’s definition of Herrschaft)?
• Can we capture the exploitation of these opportunities?
• Is it possible to capture the respective contributions of women and men, various social groups, religious communities, and other social individuals to the creation and transformation(s) of these cultural landscapes?
• Using the database, is it possible to identify and recognise causal relationships or coincidences in terms of modal logic?

The goal of the RAUMNORM project in the coming years will therefore be to develop a robust hermeneutics and apply it in practice with the help of the data collected. To achieve this, joint fieldwork will be coordinated and carried out. This will take place on four different levels: ad hoc, real-time collaboration on local excavations and relevant written sources (micro level); analyses and workshops focused on individual spaces (meso level); and comparative analyses of the project’s broader region (macro level). The latter also take a comparative look at other regions of the world for the purpose of intercultural contextualisation (global level). For the resulting problems of periodisation, see most recently Beecroft 2025.

Publications

Publications on which the research project builds: