SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
If we review the evidence obtained from the analysis of the
legal and administrative documents discussed on the preceding
pages, we find ourselves confronted with results of a
widely varying nature. The most illuminating of the considered
sources is doubtlessly the Lex Bajuvariorum. It has
furnished us with a body of specific and detailed architectural
information that enables us to reconstruct the Bajuvarian
standard house of the beginning of the eighth
century. The Lex Alamannorum conveyed a clear idea of the
general layout of a West-Germanic farmstead of this
period with its principal living unit, the
domus or
sala, and
its variety of special service structures scattered throughout
the yard and the fields. But they told us little, if anything,
about the architectural design of these structures. The
Capitulare de villis gave us an insight into the administrative
complexity of a Frankish crown estate. The
Brevium
exempla, finally, provided us with a precise statistical
account of the number and type of buildings to be found
on five such Carolingian crown estates, and illustrated how
on this highest level of Frankish society a new material,
stone, began to intrude into the northern tradition of building
in timber. They told us a good deal about the number
and type of rooms of which the individual buildings were
composed—but they told nothing about the constructional
features of these rooms, or the houses of which they were a
part.
Thus we would still remain thoroughly ignorant about
the architectural layout and design of a Carolingian residence
and its agricultural service structures were it not for
the light that has recently been thrown on this question by
our colleagues in the field of archaeology.