ABSTRACT
Historians find out about the past from sources, traces of the past which remain. Gradually the range and status of the sources available to them has increased and the process of interpreting sources has developed. Medieval chronicles tended not to make inferences, and not to analyse, evaluate or reflect on statements about events. Bede was unusual in that he did list the written sources he used and attempted to evaluate the oral tradition. With the Renaissance, however, there was a new emphasis on the original documents of Greece and Rome. This led historians, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to place greater emphasis on research, and on the use of a wider range of sources: Camden’s Britannia was based on ‘evidence’, and Hume’s History of England traced changes in prices, wages and dress. In the nineteenth century, documentation, and the particular rather than the general, became increasingly important. Documents of varying status were considered relevant: Macaulay used broadsheets, songs, maps and party propaganda as well as political documents. For the first time the research techniques of history were taught in universities, in the Sorbonne and in Berlin, at Oxford and Cambridge. By the twentieth century, history involved an even wider range of sources and areas of enquiry: archaeology, cartography, folk songs, children’s games, old sayings, folk lore, oral history, place-names and statistics. Traditions from the past which continue into the present, such as traditional farming methods which may reflect on the past, are studied. Therefore, when children find out about the past from old newspapers, songs, games, photographs or oral history, this is not simply because such sources may be accessible to them; they are also the sources used by academic historians.
