QCAA Ancient History flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Primary source

Evidence produced within the period being studied or by a direct participant, such as inscriptions, coins, letters or artefacts, offering direct but often partial and biased testimony.

Secondary source

An interpretation or synthesis created after the period, such as a modern history book, which depends on and reshapes earlier primary evidence and reflects its author's methods.

Reliability versus usefulness

A source can be useful while unreliable: usefulness concerns what information it can supply, reliability concerns how trustworthy that information is given bias, date and corroboration.

Corroboration

Confirming a claim by comparing independent sources. Agreement across sources with different origins strengthens a claim; a single uncorroborated source supports only tentative conclusions.

Provenance

The origin and history of a source, including authorship, place of production, date and chain of ownership, which determine how much weight its testimony can bear.

Stratigraphy

The study of layered deposits in archaeological sites. Lower layers are generally earlier, allowing relative dating and interpretation of artefacts by their deposition context.

Relative versus absolute dating

Relative dating orders finds by sequence or association without fixed years; absolute dating assigns calendar ages using methods such as radiocarbon, dendrochronology or historical synchronisms.

Epigraphy

The study of inscriptions on stone, metal or other durable materials, providing official decrees, dedications and epitaphs that often preserve elite, public perspectives.

Numismatics

The study of coins, used for dating, iconography, propaganda, trade patterns and economic history because coins carry images, legends and controlled production dates.

BC and AD counting

BC years count backwards toward year one and AD years count forwards; there is no year zero, so cross-era intervals require subtracting one when converting to calendar arithmetic.

Literary source

A written work with literary form, such as a history, biography, speech or epic, valuable for perspectives and narrative but shaped by genre, audience and rhetorical purpose.

Documentary source

Non-literary written evidence such as papyri, legal records, administrative lists or private letters, often closer to daily life and less polished than literary texts.

Material evidence

Physical remains including buildings, tools, pottery, human remains and art. It can inform on non-elite life and economy but requires interpretation of context and function.

Survival bias

The tendency for durable, elite or officially preserved material to survive while perishable and marginal evidence disappears, distorting the surviving record of an ancient society.

Social hierarchy analysis

Examining how status, citizenship, wealth, gender and legal position structured a society, and how institutions enforced or challenged those distinctions over time.

Cause and consequence

Analytical distinction between underlying structural conditions and immediate triggers, and between intended outcomes and unintended long-term effects of events, policies or reforms.

Historiography

The study of how history has been written, including the methods, assumptions and biases of ancient authors and later scholars, and how interpretations change over time.

Thucydides' method

An approach emphasising eyewitness investigation and reasoned reconstruction of speeches, presenting analysis of power and human nature while still reflecting elite Athenian perspectives.

Herodotus' method

An inquiry collecting diverse traditions and reported accounts, often noting alternatives and divine explanations, valuable for cultural breadth but variable in factual reliability.

Tacitus' perspective

A Roman senator whose histories criticise imperial power and senatorial decline, meaning his portraits of emperors and court politics reflect elite moral judgement and rhetorical aims.

Livy's purpose

Writing moralising Roman history to celebrate Rome's values and explain its rise, so early narratives contain legendary material and reflect Augustan-era concerns rather than contemporary records.

Plutarch's biographies

Comparative life studies focused on character and moral lessons, drawing on multiple earlier sources and useful for anecdotes but not always for precise chronology.

Leadership accession basis

The route by which a leader gained power, such as inheritance, election, military backing or coup, which shapes their legitimacy, support base and later policies.

Power base

The groups and resources sustaining a leader, including army, aristocracy, priesthoods, wealth, patronage networks and popular support, whose balance determines political survival.

Reform significance test

A change is significant if it alters who holds power, how decisions are made, or how resources and status are distributed; evidence before and after must be compared.

Proximate versus structural cause

Proximate causes are immediate triggers of an event; structural causes are long-term conditions such as economic strain or institutional weakness that make the event possible.

Stated versus underlying motive

The justification actors publicly give for actions, compared with the deeper interests inferred from context and outcomes, which historians weigh using multiple sources.

Recovering non-elite voices

Using inscriptions, graffiti, graves, domestic space and documentary texts to reconstruct the lives of women, slaves and workers largely absent from elite literary accounts.

Significance criteria

Judging importance by breadth of impact, depth of change, duration of effects and how contemporaries versus later generations perceived the event or individual.

Contested interpretation

A situation where sources or historians disagree on events, motives or significance, requiring the student to compare claims, evidence and assumptions rather than choose one account.

Argument thesis

A clear, contestable central claim that organises an extended response, supported by specific sourced evidence and defended against alternative interpretations before concluding.

Institutional change

Alteration to formal structures such as assemblies, magistracies, law courts or taxation, assessed by comparing decision-making and distribution of power before and after.