ABSTRACT
Historical evidence is found in the records that human beings and theiractivities leave behind-written words, oral traditions, pictorial materials, and physical artifacts, to name a few. Most of the time, these remnants are fragmented and incomplete, but without them history would not exist. For that history to exist, historians must understand how evidence is collected, used, analyzed, and how it can sometimes be abused. Historians must hone their craft carefully as they form explanations of the past to provide understanding of past events, human nature, and their relationship to today. Historians’ accounts are rigorously developed through carefully gathering and analyzing evidence and then clearly presenting relationships among those pieces of information in cogent, articulate prose. This chapter covers evidence that historians use in their work as well as the rules used to evaluate those records and artifacts. In general, two basic classes of historical evidence exist: primary and secondary. Within these two classes are subsets of evidence and numerous ways of proving authenticity and credibility of the materials.
