Historical Sources, Historiography and Chronology Skills
Domain focus
This section tests how historians select and criticise sources and how they establish dates: primary and secondary sources, archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, literature, foreign accounts and dating methods.
Core concepts
- Primary sources come from the period: inscriptions, coins, pottery, buildings, letters and chronicles. Secondary sources interpret them later.
- Epigraphy reads inscriptions; numismatics studies coins; archaeology studies material remains through stratigraphy.
- Literary sources include Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian and foreign accounts; each has audience and bias.
- Historiography includes colonial, nationalist, Marxist and subaltern approaches with different questions.
- Chronology uses BC and AD, now often BCE and CE; radiocarbon, dendrochronology and stratigraphy help date finds.
Worked example
An inscription names a king and a regnal year. Reasoning: it is primary evidence for the name and title, but not automatically for every claim in it. The historian checks the script, findspot, coin evidence and later records before accepting the date.
Traps
Do not treat a source as unbiased because it is old. Forged inscriptions and interpolated texts exist. Radiocarbon dates need calibration. Do not mix BC and AD order; there is no year zero in the traditional BC-AD system.