Calculating the Middle Ages? Quantitative Research and Social Network Analysis as New Tools for Historical Studies more

Overview on the possibilities of quantitative research and Network Analysis for Medieval Studies.

Three main focuses:
* Quantitative data from the natural sciences: climatic and natural phenomena

* Quantitative data from medieval sources: economic and demographic quantities

* The complexity of medieval societies: social network analysis on the basis of medieval sources

Conclusio:
* Complexity allows us to establish a framework for comparative research across time and space > the patterns of interaction between environment and society and within societies are and were always complex.
* We can analyse how similar crisis phenomena influenced the development of societies with different (or similar) traditions, religions, institutions, geographies or ecologies > differences matter!
* At the same time, we do not  loose track of essential commonalities (the “strange parallels”) of environmental impacts and historical change in pre-modern societies.
* We recognize the high significance of endogenous social dynamics in the polities in this period, on which exogenous changes (such as climatic) and extreme events had an impact, but not along the lines of an overwhelming linear causation as postulated in (older and) recent research.