Tools of History: Chapter 1 Section 3

Primary Sources Firsthand information

• Court documents• Speeches • Eyewitness accounts• Letters• Diaries• Autobiographies• Personal interviews

Evidence of Primary Sources

Could possibly be:• Written• Oral• A photo• A video• An historic map• Museum artifacts

Secondary Sources Account provided after the fact by

someone who was not actually there…usually based on primary sources• Textbooks• Encyclopedias• Biographies• Articles/blogs written by historians• Museum interpretations

Evaluating a source for reliability Is it authentic- is it

truthful? Is it what it claims to be? • Is it a primary source?• Is it actually from the time

period?• Who is giving the

information? What is his/her point of view?

• Would that person or organization have a particular bias?

• You can get flawed information if you do not check your sources!

Some helpful hints for avoiding bad sources

Do NOT use wikipedia!!! EVER! Look for .edu at the end of a web address. It may

not be 100% accurate, but it is probably a worthy source.

Check the time frame of what you are studying. Let’s say you are studying the Civil War. Someone who is living today can not be an eyewitness to Civil War history, but he or she may have collected many primary source documents to tell the story. Some people are known for their research of certain time periods. Shelby Foote is a good example of an expert in researching history.

Some helpful hints for avoiding bad sources

“And I really do think that the difficulty of research makes it more real to you than punching a thing to find out how many men were killed at this particular action.”Shelby Foote

Some helpful hints for avoiding bad sources

Watch for bias! Does the writer use wording that shows a particular bias about a person or event?

Differing political, social, or economic viewpoints may give different sides of an event.

“History is written by the victors.”• Winston Churchill

Would your textbook be different if it were written by British authors?

Look for history in lots of places! Cooking utensils Catalogs Children’s books Almanacs Old photos Farming utensils Office tools Even

graveyards!

Can history be changed? No, but our interpretations

sometimes change, or maybe we get new evidence.

Can you think of any examples in which most people thought a certain way about an event or person, but their perceptions changed? Why did this change happen?

Archaeological evidenceArchaeologists study artifacts,

the objects that humans have made. For instance they might dig in a kitchen midden, an area outside where a family used to prepare and eat meals. Layers of soil and rock which have mounted atop the area have much to reveal about the culture of the people. We usually think of middens to examine prehistoric people, but we can use them for more recent history, also. What kinds of things did they eat? What kinds of tools did they use to cook? What eating utensils did they use? What does the evidence tell us?

Chronology Absolute

Chronology• The EXACT time and

place of an event

Relative Chronology• When an event

occurred in relationship to other events.

• This helps to establish correlations between events, cause and effect, or even lack of a connection between events. Think of the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and you have the idea of cause and effect.