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New Publicaton from the Middle Ages

Open access: Fluvial Landscapes in Transition. A Concise Multidisciplinary Guide to the Study of Sources on the Fluvial Anthroposphere

2025/06/20 by

Edited by Gerrit Jasper Schenk and Nicolai Hillmus (section Middle Ages, Institute of History, TU Darmstadt), this brief source guide intends a critical introduction to different ways of researching the fluvial anthroposphere, i.e. the floodplain landscape under the increasing influence of humans over the course of time. In addition to the use of typical historiographical sources such as urbaria and chronicles, the individual articles also analyze material sources such as the remains of river bank reinforcements, flood marks, sediment profiles, terrain models as well as plant and animal fossils.

The publication, which released on 16.06.2025, arose from an idea at the first annual conference of the DFG Priority Programme 2361 ‘Towards the fluvial anthroposphere’ to create an accessible tool which helps cross-disciplinary source-critical expertise in history, archaeology, geography and biology to be communicated based on a common research question.

At the same time, this anthology is the launch of the new series ‘Darmstädter Historische(n) Studien’, in which individual essays, anthologies, monographs and excellent qualification theses (Bachelor's and Master's theses, dissertations etc.) can be published in open access in the future. For more information on the series, .