Index

S. Topic Pg
No. no.
01. Preface 3
02. Synopsis 4
03. Credit 5
04. Intro 6
05. Categories of sources- 1. Primary 6,7,8
2.
Secondary
3.
Tertiary
06. Artefacts, Excavations in 9,10
archeology
07. Newspaper 10,1
1
08. Manuscripts 11,1
2
09. Conclusion 12
10. Bibliography 13
11. Questionnaire 14
12 Teacher’s Remarks 15
Preface
Historical sources are the main way that we can interact with and
understand more about past events. We can explore events that
shaped our society and even discover what society was like back
then through the personal accounts of the people who lived through
it. Historical sources are, at their most basic level, something that
tells us about history. It may be a document, a picture, a sound
recording, a book, a cinema film, a television program or an object.
Any sort of artifact from the period in question that conveys
information can qualify as a source.

This project is about Historical sources of information. Thorough

this project, I’ll try to answer questions like- why are the historical
sources so important, what are the different cateries of historical
sources, how can we classify them, what are some major primary
sources, how do we find artefacts, and many more to go.
Synopsis
Credit
Intro
Learning from history is very important, as it helps us to work out how we
got here. We can explore events that shaped our society and even discover
what society was like back then through the personal accounts of the
people who lived through it.
Historical sources are anything that tells us about history. It may be a
document, a picture, a sound recording, a book, a cinema film, a television
program or an object. Any sort of artifact from the period in question that
conveys information can qualify as a source. There are three categories in
which these resources can be classified- Primary, secondary, tertiary.
These classifications are based on the originality of the material and the
proximity of the source or origin. This informs the reader as to whether the
author is reporting information that is first hand or is conveying the
experiences and opinions of others which is considered second hand.

Categories Of Sources
Primary sources
Primary sources refer to documents or other items that provide first-hand,
eyewitness accounts of events. They are original sources created at the
time a historical event occurs (or possibly afterwards) and are directly
associated with their creator (or user). Essentially, a primary source is
the subjective interpretation of a witness to an event. For example, if you
are studying the civil rights movement, a newspaper article published the
day after the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march and a memoir written by
someone who participated in the march would both be considered primary
sources.
Historians use primary sources as the raw evidence to analyze and
interpret the past.
For the arts, history, and humanities, original primary source documents
usually are housed in museums, archives, restricted library collections, and
government offices. Reproductions of primary source documents often can
be found in online digital collections, microform collections, books, and
other secondary works.
 
Examples of primary sources include diaries, journals, speeches,
interviews, letters, memos, photographs, videos, public opinion polls, and
government records, ancient artifacts (consisting of pots, coins, jewellery,
bones, tools etc.), manuscripts, newspapers, among many other things.

Secondary sources
A secondary source is a source that provides non-original or secondhand
data or information. 
Secondary sources are usually based on primary sources. Books by
historians, articles in academic journals, and literature review articles are
common secondary sources. Historians typically use these secondary
resources to get a better understanding of a topic and to find further
primary and secondary sources on a topic. Other examples of secondary
sources include biographies, critical studies of an author's work, and
compilations of essays by historians.
Historians publish secondary sources - often scholarly articles or books -
that explain their interpretation of the primary sources. When you write a
historical research paper, you are creating a secondary source based on
your own analysis of primary source material. 

Tertiary Sources
A tertiary source, also called a reference work, is a source that gives an
overview of information gathered from primary and secondary sources but
does not provide original interpretations or analysis. These are reference
works that list other kinds of sources and provide background information.
Examples include:
  Dictionaries
 Encyclopedias
 Databases
 Bibliographies
These sources compile information from a wide variety of sources. They
may also list, summarize, and index sources that provide original data or
direct evidence (primary sources) and sources that describe or interpret
this evidence (secondary sources). Tertiary sources are useful for finding
background information on your research topic, like key terms or the
names of important scholars. But they are usually not cited directly
in academic writing.
Let’s look at some of the primary sources in detail
I. Artifacts
Artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, individual or
group. Examples of artifacts from various time periods would include
stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, seals, statues, and
items of personal adornment such as jewelry and clothing. Other examples
include bone that show signs of human modification, fire
cracked rocks from a hearth, or plant material used for food. In addition to
giving archaeologists important information about
previous cultures and civilizations, artifacts aid in dating earth's time
periods and in historical record keeping. If a picture is "worth a thousand
words" as the expression goes, then artifacts tell even more. Their beauty,
rarity, and history unlock the secrets of their ancient owners. In
archaeology it is not only the physical location of a discovery that holds
significance, but the context (or setting) as well. And an archaeological
context does not only refer to a geographical place, it can also be an event
in time which has been preserved in the archaeological record. Multiple
fills of soil in a ditch, for example, could imply multiple contexts.
Artifacts can come from many different sources such as:
 Grave goods (those personal items Buried along with a body)
 Hoards
 Votive offerings
 From any Archaeology feature such as a pit, wall, ditch
 A Midden (a landfill)

Artifacts are collected through excavations.

-Excavation in Archeology-
Today, archeology is still equated with excavation in the popular mind.
Most sites are no longer fully excavated unless they are in danger of
destruction from building or erosion. Archaeologists leave a portion of
some sites unexcavated to preserve artifacts and context for future
research. Furthermore, there are now many alternatives to excavation for
studying an archeological site, including surface archeology in which
surface-exposed artifacts are detected and recorded; remote sensing; and
the examination of soil and plant distributions. These techniques are
nondestructive, and permit the archeologist to easily examine large areas.
Archeologists often use nondestructive techniques such as electrical
resistivity meters and magnetometers to locate structures and artifacts on
the site without digging. Soil testing may shed light on settlement patterns
connected with the site. Aerial photography can also provide useful
information for planning the excavation. In unobstructed fields, past
human occupation of an area is evident through visible soil stains left by
plowing, digging, and construction. But even today, in almost all
archeological projects, there comes a time when it is necessary to probe
beneath the surface to obtain additional information about a site.
Before any excavation is begun, the site must be located. Techniques used
to find a site may include remote sensing (for example, by aerial
photography), soil surveys, and walk-through or surface surveys. The
digging of shovel tests, augured core samples and, less commonly,
trenches may also be used to locate archaeological sites. Soil samples may
be collected from various sites and depths to determine whether any
buried features are present.

II. Newspapers
Newspapers can serve as useful primary sources for historical research.
They reflect the time period in which they were created, and provide a
glimpse into society at the time.
Newspapers satisfy many canons of historical evidence. They are
contemporary, and, being written without knowledge of the end, cannot
bolster any cause without making a plain showing of their intent. Their
object is the relation of daily events; and if their relation is colored by
honest or dishonest partisanship, this is easily discernible by the critic
from the internal evidence and from an easily acquired knowledge of a
few external facts. As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the
news; and much of the news is present politics. Moreover, the newspaper
itself, its news and editorial columns, its advertisements, is a graphic
picture of society.
Historians generally use newspapers for three purposes: learning facts
about specific events; looking for long-term trends; and searching for
details or the “texture” surrounding an event—a fact or story that
illuminates or complicates a larger pattern. Newspapers are often the first
kind of source historians of the past two centuries will turn to for gathering
evidence, but historians rarely rely on newspaper evidence alone.
Newspapers can be used to locate facts related to a specific event.
Historians investigating a specific event sometimes use newspapers from
the place and time in which the event occurred to uncover details and
perhaps find firsthand descriptions. But when historians use newspapers in
this way, they proceed with caution, as newspapers often include factual
errors and always reflect a point of view. Newspaper reports are frequently
incomplete, biased, and/or inaccurate.

III. Manuscripts
The noun manuscript evolved from the Latin manu scriptus, meaning
“written by hand.” Manu is “hand” and scriptus is “to write." It refers to
old documents actually written by hand before books were made, but it
can also refer to a writer's unpublished work whether it's handwritten or
typed. A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth,
metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five
years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value.
Lithographs and printed volumes are not manuscripts. Manuscripts are
found in hundreds of different languages and scripts. Often, one language
is written in a number of different scripts. For example, Sanskrit is written
in Oriya script, Grantha script, Devanagari script and many other scripts.
Manuscripts are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on
rocks, firmans, revenue records which provide direct information on
events or processes in history. Manuscripts have knowledge content.
Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls (volumen in
Latin) or books (codex, plural codices). Manuscripts were produced
on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch
bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived. In India,
the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was
used from ancient times until the 19th century.
Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th
century, and by the late 15th century had largely replaced parchment for
many purposes. When Greek or Latin works were published, numerous
professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium,
each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud.
The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness
of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed
within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings,
discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in
jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea
scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves,
survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash
preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the
Papyri in Herculaneum.

CONCLUSION
So, to sum up, all sources of history can be classified
into three categories- primary, secondary and
tertiary. Using all these sources of history and
methods like excavation, historians trace back life to
times we don’t know of.
Bibliography
 https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org
 https://www.encyclopedia.com
 https://library.uncw.edu
 https://guides.lib.uci.edu
Questionnaire