Archives, editions, and databases contain a tremendous amount of medieval and early modern charters. Similarities in the form, layout, and text of charters enable comparative research of large corpora. To formulate or prove assumptions...
moreArchives, editions, and databases contain a tremendous amount of medieval and early modern charters. Similarities in the form, layout, and text of charters enable comparative research of large corpora. To formulate or prove assumptions about related historical processes, quantitative methods from social sciences can be adapted to historical research with minor limitations. However, corpus compilation, categorization, and quantification of diplomatic characteristics, as well as the handling of missing sources, arise substantial challenges. For this purpose, the article presents 21 standards for the quantitative analysis of large corpora based on scientific criteria of traceability, verifiability, and reproducibility. As Loren Haskins and Kirk Jeffrey note in their book Understanding Quantitative History, “Not all historical problems can usefully be addressed through quantification, but some can”. By establishing standards, this article determines which phenomena these are.