Sources & Evidence (Years 6–11) — History

Historians reconstruct the past from sources, which they divide into primary and secondary evidence.

A source is anything that gives us information about the past. Historians turn sources into evidence by asking careful questions of them and using them to support an argument about what happened and why.

Why this matters Everything we know about the past comes from sources. Learning to sort, read and question them is the core skill of the historian, and it is exactly what exam questions test. The same skill helps you judge news reports, adverts and posts you meet every day.

Primary and secondary sources

A primary source comes from the time being studied, made by someone who was actually there, such as a letter, a coin, an object or a photograph. A secondary source is made later by someone studying the period, such as a textbook, a history book or a documentary. Importantly, the same object can be primary for one question and secondary for another, so always ask what the source is being used for before you label it.

Primary sources are created at the time of the event; secondary sources are created afterwards by people studying it.

Common exam mistake: assuming a primary source is automatically more reliable than a secondary one just because it was made at the time. An eyewitness can still be biased, mistaken or writing propaganda — being "primary" tells you when a source was made, not how trustworthy it is.

Kinds of source

Sources come in many forms, and the more kinds a historian can use, the fuller their picture becomes:

Written sources: letters, laws, diaries, newspapers and inscriptions.
Artefacts: physical objects such as tools, pottery, coins and buildings.
Oral history: spoken memories passed down or recorded in interviews.
Visual sources: paintings, maps, cartoons and photographs.

From source to evidence

A source only becomes evidence when it is used to answer a question. A single coin, sitting on its own, is just a coin; but used to show which ruler was in power at a certain time, it becomes valuable evidence. This is why historians weigh many sources together rather than trusting just one, cross-checking them against each other.

Questions to ask of a source

Historians use the letters N.O.P. as a memory aid: Nature (what type of source is it?), Origin (who made it, and when and where?) and Purpose (why was it made?). Answering these three questions helps you judge how useful a source is for a particular enquiry.

Exam technique: when judging how useful a source is, work through Nature, Origin and Purpose explicitly and tie each point back to the question — "this is useful for X because..." scores far better than simply describing what the source shows.

No source is perfect, but every source can tell us something if we ask the right questions.