Plenartagungsbericht der Forschergruppe B-II-2

Gegenstand und Ziele: Die Forschergruppe B-II-2 befasst sich mit regionalen Milieus und der Macht des Staates in Ägypten vom Alten Reich bis in Islamische Zeit. Zum einen sollen die regionalen Strukturen als solche als gleichermaßen soziale wie spatiale Organisationsformen in ihrem eigenen Charakter und in ihrer eigenen Dynamik in den Blick genommen werden. Zum andern soll der Rahmen der betrachteten Phänomene über den administrativ-ökonomischen Aspekt hinaus insbesondere auf das Gebiet der Kultur und der Lebensformen ausgeweitet werden. Dabei wird gemeinsam anhand verschiedener Fallstudien das Verhältnis und die Wechselwirkung zwischen staatlich-administrativer Ordnung und dem Handeln lokaler Eliten erforscht. Eine mehrfach wiederkehrende Komponente sind dabei regionale Machthaber – wie Bürgermeister, Pagarchen, Nomarchen oder Lokalregenten, die an der Verwaltungsspitze der jeweiligen Region standen und verschiedene Formen des Wissens generierten bzw. auf diese zurückgriffen, insbesondere Erfahrungs- und Verwaltungswissen sowie Erinnerungswissen. Methoden: Durch die Länge des zu erforschenden Zeitraumes (mehr als 4000 Jahre) können unterschiedliche Fallstudien nur nach Material und Methode betrieben werden. Dabei stellen die beiden bereits genannten Bereiche des Verwaltungswissens und des Erinnerungswissens die Methoden. Diskussionsstand in der Forschergruppe: Die gemeinsamen Forschungen und Diskussionen innerhalb von B-II-2 zeigten dabei zum einen das enorme Potential, das in dem Rahmenthema steckt, machten zum anderen aber auch sichtbar, dass für die längsschnittartige, epochenübergreifende Betrachtung von Phänomenen bei völlig unterschiedlichen Quellenüberlieferungen eine Anbindung der Fragestellungen an die spezifischen Theorieangebote unerlässlich war. Die Forschergruppe hat sich in zahlreichen Diskussionen über die theoretische Fundamentierung der in B-II-2 zusammengefassten Einzelprojekte ausgetauscht, vor allem im Hinblick auf die übergreifende Thematik des Exzellenzclusters Topoi. Sie hat sich dabei auf die oben geschilderte Auswahl von Methoden verständigt, sowohl für die laufenden Forschungen der einzelnen Mitglieder als auch für die gemeinsamen Ziele der Forschergruppe. Durch die personelle Veränderung der Gruppe und die damit einhergehende Erweiterung des Fragenspektrums erwies sich insbesondere die Aufnahme einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskussion über Formen kultureller Erinnerung als hilfreich.Darüber hinaus bot auch die vom 4. bis 5. November 2010 von unserer Forschergruppe am Deutschen Archäologischen Institut ausgerichtete internationale und interdisziplinäre Konferenz »Village Egypt – Continuity and Change in Regional Milieus in Egypt« weitere Gelegenheiten, unsere Methodiken und Thematiken mit zahlreichen Kollegen umfassend zu diskutieren und so das Forschungsprofil der Gruppe weiter zu schärfen

Law‐books, concomitant texts and ethnically framed legal pluralism on the fringes of post‐Carolingian Europe: northern Italy and Catalonia around 1000

Around 1000, a new type of law‐book emerged in Catalonia and northern Italy that attests to new ways of handling legal material. Incorporating in full the Visigothic and Lombard law codes, respectively, these law‐books provided a base for studying and interpreting old law through comments, glosses etc., addressing new users such as lay judges. By looking at the Catalonian Liber iudicum popularis and the north Italian Liber Papiensis in their manuscript contexts along with several revealing concomitant texts, the article seeks to demonstrate that these law‐books also need to be understood as reflecting a transformation of law brought about by the two regions’ former belonging to the Carolingian empire. A manuscript‐based approach can demonstrate how the local appropriation of pre‐Carolingian and Carolingian traditions contributed to the legitimization of post‐Carolingian rule in both regions, whose legal cultures evolved quite differently despite numerous parallels and points of comparison

Fuzzy Borders

The Research Group »Fuzzy Borders« investigates the diverse qualities of borders and boundaries in antiquity as well as corpuses of knowledge which are effective in shaping the spatial design of borders. Its primary focus is on border zones and on the kind of indistinct, fuzzy borderlines which become visible and describable only against the background of concrete forms of delimitation. Our research activities are divided into two project groups, the first concerned with the formation and linear definition of borders, for example in the form of town walls, the second concerned with their dissolution and with border zones. The group is affiliated through Silke Müth and Peter Schneider with the DFG network of younger researchers entitled »Fokus Fortifikation,« which is preoccupied with town walls and fortifications in the eastern Mediterranean region. Incorporated into Research Area B (»Mechanisms of Control and Social Spaces«), the project is designed to provide a foundation for an improved understanding of the organization of social groups and of states through an examination of their external borders. We are also interested, finally, in instances where definitions of external borders are renounced altogether and states are organized from the center toward outer margins, for example, with the ›edge‹ of a given territory remaining undefined. Investigated on the basis of archaeological finds and textual sources are transboundary social relationships, whose significance for the transfer of knowledge currently forms the substance of discussions within our research group

Autonomous robotic nanofabrication with reinforcement learning

The ability to handle single molecules as effectively as macroscopic building-blocks would enable the construction of complex supramolecular structures inaccessible to self-assembly. The fundamental challenges obstructing this goal are the uncontrolled variability and poor observability of atomic-scale conformations. Here, we present a strategy to work around both obstacles, and demonstrate autonomous robotic nanofabrication by manipulating single molecules. Our approach employs reinforcement learning (RL), which finds solution strategies even in the face of large uncertainty and sparse feedback. We demonstrate the potential of our RL approach by removing molecules autonomously with a scanning probe microscope from a supramolecular structure -- an exemplary task of subtractive manufacturing at the nanoscale. Our RL agent reaches an excellent performance, enabling us to automate a task which previously had to be performed by a human. We anticipate that our work opens the way towards autonomous agents for the robotic construction of functional supramolecular structures with speed, precision and perseverance beyond our current capabilities.Comment: 3 figure

The Iberian Peninsula in the Imperial and Post-Imperial Context

This paper investigates the way in which technical and normative knowledge relating to infrastructures, mobility and water management, which the Romans began developing in the republican period, was functionalized for the purpose of expanding the empire in the Iberian Peninsula, starting with the establishment of Roman provincial rule and continuing into the Islamic epoch. It also examines how that knowledge was entrenched in the individual Iberian provinces, and adapted to reflect specific local features. In addition to shedding light on how imperial concepts manifested themselves in the appropriation of space in specific contexts, the example of the Iberian Peninsula elucidates both how the knowledge in question was adapted to meet ‘regional-political’ objectives once the imperial frame of reference fell away and how it was ultimately restructured, modified and legitimized to reflect overriding religious considerations. The paper also provides examples indicating the degree to which antique concepts lent themselves to transformation while simultaneously representing both a potential and a challenge for any subsequent rulers

‘Because their patron never dies’: ecclesiastical freedmen, socio-religious interaction, and group formation under the aegis of ‘church property’ in the early medieval west (sixth to eleventh centuries)

In the early medieval west, patronate, as adapted from Roman law, was a fundamental category in determining the legal status of freedmen. In many cases it entailed a basic set of obligations. In an increasing number of situations, however, the patron became an ecclesiastical institution, since slaves and freed persons were often given to churches and monasteries. As ecclesiastical institutions regarded their patronal rights over freed persons as part of inalienable church property, the patronal relationship became permanent and inheritable. In Eastern Francia (the Rhineland and beyond) this transformed ecclesiastical freedmen into religiously defined social groups with potentially distinct aims, religious tasks, and organizational structures, and a shared notion of freedom. From the Carolingian period onward, it even became attractive to enter voluntarily into this status. It is argued here that with its underlying network of socio-religious relations, patronate over ecclesiastical freedmen and censuales can be better understood when considered as an element of a ‘temple society’