Analyzing Primary Sources Historians mainly base their interpretations of the past on primary sources. Primary sources are sources produced in the time period under study. Primary sources can vary from written documents to material sources and even oral sources for those who have access to interviews. The process of interpreting evidence from a primary source first requires an assessment of its basic components. You must ask yourself the following questions :
First:
- Who wrote or produced the source?
- Was it an individual or a group? If it was an individual, the historian must attempt to approximate this person’s position, status, occupation, religion, political leanings, ethnicity, gender, education; in short, any factors that might help to explain the author’s intent. The same applies to group-authored sources, except that the group’s composition as well as the cultural and political space it occupies in society can also yield clues to authorial intent.
Second:
- What specific type of source is it? Certain types of documents or materials are produced based on specific rhetorical, linguistic, and stylistic formats. The source format can alert the historian to the type of evidence that might be found.
Third:
- When was the source written or produced? The time between when the event under study occurred and when the source was produced might make a difference in how the historian approaches it. For example, war chronicles were often written many years after the fact. The same can be said of saints’ hagiographies. As memory fades, authors attempt to put the best spin on events, the veracity of such accounts might come into question.
- What was happening when the document was written? What is the social, political, and economic context of the document?
- How might contemporary events have affected the author?
Fourth:
- Where was the source written or produced? Location another means of putting the source in context. The location where the author produced a document and that location’s political and socio-economic situation can provide valuable clues to a historian attempting to dissect a specific source.
Fifth:
- Why, or what was the purpose behind the source? All authors have an intent or an agenda that shapes the tone and content of a document. Unravelling the possible motives behind a source is crucial to assessing how the evidence it presents must be treated.
- Can we rely on a specific document to gives us a factual account of an event?
- Are there unspoken assumptions in the document?
- Does the narrative construction of a source provide clues to authorial intent and the mentality of the time?
- By trying to comprehend the motive behind the source, a researcher will often find new questions, concerns, and opportunities that must be evaluated accordingly.
For more help on primary sources, please visit: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/resources/primarysources
