The Work of the Historian and Archaeologist
The Work of the Historian and Archaeologist
This domain tests how evidence is found and processed: the historian in the archive and the archaeologist in the field, and the limits of each method.
The historian's method
- Begin with a question, not a topic. Then locate sources: archives, libraries, newspapers, census returns, registers, government papers, oral testimony.
- Evaluate, corroborate, interpret. Two historians using the same documents may reach different conclusions; that is historiography, not dishonesty.
The archaeologist's method
- Survey before digging: aerial photography, field walking, geophysical survey, old maps and placenames.
- Excavation is destructive, so recording is everything. Context - the exact position of a find within its layer (stratigraphy) - often matters more than the object itself.
- Dating techniques: radiocarbon for organic material (returns a range, e.g. 2500–2200 BC), dendrochronology for timber with preserved rings, typology for pottery and tools.
- Post-excavation: conservation, analysis, publication and museum display. In Ireland excavation is licensed and monuments are protected under the National Monuments Acts.
Worked example A crannóg is excavated in a lake. The team records a brushwood floor beneath two metres of peat, oak posts, a leather shoe and a bronze pin. Dendrochronology on the oak gives a felling date, the pin is dated by its type, and the peat above shows when the site was abandoned. Reasoning: three different methods combine with layer order to give a sequence, not a single guess.
Traps Claiming archaeologists 'look for treasure' - the evidence is the context. Quoting radiocarbon as an exact year. Assuming an official document must be accurate.