Units 1 and 2: Foundations of Ancient History - Sources, Methods and Societies
What this domain asks you to do
Units 1 and 2 build the toolkit you will use for the rest of the course. You must understand types of evidence (literary, documentary, archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic, artistic), the difference between primary and secondary sources, and how historians assess reliability, bias, purpose and audience. You also need working knowledge of chronology conventions (BCE/CE, counting backwards before the common era), archaeological methods (stratigraphy, context, provenance, excavation reports) and the limits of the surviving record - survival, transmission and selectivity.
Content knowledge matters too: the nature of a city-state (polis), social hierarchy, slavery, religion and civic ritual, economy and trade, and daily life in at least one ancient society. Questions often ask you to compare two societies or two source types.
Traps to watch for
- Confusing a source's date with its subject's date. A later writer describing earlier events is still a later source.
- Treating one source as proof. A single inscription or passage usually supports an inference, not a certainty - say so.
- Assuming bias makes a source useless. Bias tells you about the author's agenda; it does not automatically void the evidence.
- Muddling BCE arithmetic. 500 BCE is earlier than 400 BCE; there is no year zero.
- Overclaiming from silence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially with perishable materials.
Rule of thumb
For any source question, run the O-CAP check: Origin (who, when, where), Content (what it says and what it leaves out), Audience and purpose, Problems (bias, survival, genre). Then state what the source lets you conclude and how confidently.
Worked example
Asked whether a victory inscription proves a king's campaign happened as described: identify it as a primary, commemorative, elite, public source; note its purpose is self-promotion; corroborate with archaeology or a rival's record; conclude the campaign likely occurred but the scale and conduct are unverified.