Rematerializing cities Rechnungsbücher als Quelle für eine Umweltgeschichte der vorindustriellen Stadt - Potenziale und Perspektiven.

The article explores the possibilities of investigating hitherto little used urban account books as sources for a socio-ecological history of pre-industrial towns. The social metabolism of such towns can be understood as the outcome of a process of material and energetic exchange within an agrarian society ultimately maintained by solar resources. Through a critical source analysis, the author illustrates this situation by looking at the utilization of land in three towns in Franconia, which were administrative centres and characterized by a large number of citizens drawing their main income from agriculture (Ackerbürgerstadt). In doing so, special attention is paid to the municipally owned communal woods. All things considered, the article constitutes a theoretical contribution to a re-materialization of urban history, a field that has in many respects been influenced in a rather one-sided manner by the 'cultural turn'. Understood as the interplay between symbolic forms, 'culture' can nevertheless only be adequately comprehended and interpreted within the framework of social spaces that are clearly defined by their social metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]