Chapter 1: Finding Out About The Past Flashcards
What is a primary source?
A piece of information written or made at the time an event took place
Name some examples of primary sources:
Original Buildings, photographs, films, newspapers, letters, books
What is a secondary source?
A piece of information written or made after an event took place
Name some examples of secondary sources:
Textbooks, history books, reconstructions of historical sites or buildings, an artists interpretation of how things looked in the past.
How can sources be unreliable?
They may be biased or prapaganda.
What should you do when studying a written source?
Find out who wrote it and if they are a member of a political party or organisation that supports a particular viewpoint.
Why must historians be careful when studying photographs?
They can be changed, commonly done in the time of Stalins rule, who often removed people who were considered disloyal or it of favour from photos.
Why can memoirs and/or diaries be unreliable?
The authors memory may have faded and may have a different opinion form when the event took place.
What do BC, BCE and AD mean?
BC: before Christ
BCE: before the common era
AD: Anno Domini (Latin for ‘in the year of our Lord’)
What are the three periods that pre-history is divided up into, and why are they called that?
The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They were named after the materials used to make tools and weapons during that time.
What is archaeology?
The study of things people have left behind them, and the way of finding out about the past before written records were kept.
What is pre-history?
The time in which written records were not kept.
Name & explain the different methods of finding places of archaeological interest.
Aerial photography: viewing a site form above the grounds, which allows you to see ancient remains or crop marks which would not be visible from the ground.
Geophysical Surveys: using a metal detector or other electronic probes to identify objects or features below the ground.
Field Walking: walking over a site, looking for objects that may be of interest.
Local Knowledge: oral evidence, old maps or nearby finds may lead an archaeologist to a particular area, where a trial trench may be dug.
Rescue/salvage Archaeology: when archaeologists have to work very fast in order to save as much evidence from the past as possible when artefacts are found either by the ground being disturbed or pipe-laying.
Name archaeological tools and their use:
Photographic Scales: judging the size of an object
Brush: removing dirt from an object
Sieve: separating earth from stones or other objects of interest
Toothbrush: used for removing hardened soil from an artefact
Polythene Bag: used for holding an artefact
Trowels: used for digging up dirt
Name and explain three methods of dating artefacts
Stratigraphy: the study of the layers of soil. Because of the remains of plants and trees have built up the amount of soil in the earth, artefacts from thousands of years ago have been buried under the soil
Carbon 14 Dating: all living things contain carbon-14, and when they die, they release this chemical, so archaeologists can see how old something is by the amount of carbon-14 it has.
Dendrochronology: the amount of rings a tree has represents how old it is. Rings that are wide apart means that the year was warm and reasonably wet, and rings that are close together signifies drought.
