What methods do historians use to gain knowledge?

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the people and happenings of the past. Historians use historical evidences and tools to gain knowledge. Historical Methodology is the process by which historians gather evidence and formulate ideas about the past. The approaches historians use to examine past events are to find patterns in past events, look for causes and effects that explain how and why events happened and try to see the past through the eyes of the people who lived it. Historians use past sources to gain knowledge about the past. One of these sources is primary source. A primary source is something written or created by a person who was present during the historical event. Letters, diaries, eyewitness articles, videotapes, speeches, photographs and artifacts are examples of primary sources. Anne frank's diary, At Home in Nineteenth-Century America: A Documentary History, Portrait of Terentius Neo and Voices of the Enslaved in Nineteenth-Century Cuba are real life evidences of primary sources. Next there is secondary source. A secondary source is written after a historical event by people who did not behold the event. Sometimes secondary sources deliver more composed perspectives of a happening. Books, paintings and Media reports (built on primary sources and published after an event). 500 years of Chicana Women's history, Scipione Amati's History of the kingdom of Voxu, Material culture of Breweries and The Early History of Cleanliness in America are real life evidences of secondary sources . The last type of source is called oral history/tradition. Oral history is made up of all unwritten verbal accounts of events. Historians hinge on oral history when examining cultures with no written records/evidence. This type of source is passed from generation to generation. Stories, Customs, Songs and Music are all examples of oral history. Black Oral History Collection, After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor and Oral Testimony from Survivors of the World Trade Center Attack are real life evidences of oral history sources. Historians study or examine primary and secondary sources. First, they decide where and when a source was created. Another significant question historians consider is why a source was created. Historians observe sources for credibility, or truthfulness. This is because each source replicates a perspective, or a general attitude about people and life. Historians attempt to acknowledge how climate, land forms and human activities have molded past affairs. The people and events of the past have left their mark on our world today which owes a lot to the discoveries made after. Historians Investigating evidence can guide historians to a new answer to a question or intensify an enigma. Historians rely on calendars, or dating systems to measure time and gain knowledge about the time and date of the events. Different calendars exist such as Jewish, Christian, stone calendar and etc. Historians sort history by separating it into blocks of time which leads to a historic timeline. These are all the ways historians gain knowledge.

 

Sources:

https://www.activehistory.co.uk/historiography/tok/index.htm

http://www.boone.kyschools.us/docs/building/9/tools%20of%20the%20historian.pdf