Legal history and archaeology
Cooperation
The cooperation of legal history and archaeology has a long tradition. Early on, "legal monuments" played a role; an impressive example is represented by the picture archive of the legal historian Karl Frölich (1877-1953) on "legal iconography and legal archaeology", which can be accessed digitally at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Theory.
Meanwhile, the cooperation between the "Research Center Imperial Palace Ingelheim" and the research on the European Middle Ages from 1996 to 2006 at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen and since 2007 with the Frankfurt mpilhlt also has a long tradition. The immense possibilities of historical-archaeological cooperation are obvious and have already borne fruit recently in the form of two anthologies and an exhibition. The geographical proximity of the two institutions is also a clear advantage. Their chronological focal points also overlap casually: the striking developments in the first millennium, from the end of the Roman period, the beginning of Christianization and Frankish expansion under the Merovingians to the important dominion of the Rhine-Main region in the Carolingian, Ottonian and Salian periods, as well as a renewed consolidation phase in the context of the Hohenstaufen "imperial land policy". This is reflected in the research project "Law and Mission". In addition, the geographic focus of the project is on an area that coincides with the "Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region", which has been in existence for some time, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Upper Middle Rhine Valley", thus exploring the historical roots of both.
A special focus of the cooperation will be the multimedia presentation of selected findings and their interpretation possibilities in the context of not only legal-historical research.