Working with Historical Evidence and Archives

List the four primary categories of historical evidence.

Documentary texts, material artifacts, oral testimony, and visual or quantitative records.

Identify which type of evidence is best suited to study the diet of working-class households in Victorian London (1850s) if few personal diaries exist.

Material artifacts (such as discarded animal bones, ceramic dishes, and cooking utensils from archaeological rubbish pits) paired with quantitative records like local grocer ledgers.

Explain how survival bias can distort a historian's understanding of ancient literacy.

Elite legal decrees and administrative records carved into stone or kept in guarded palaces survive, whereas everyday notes written on perishable wood, bark, or cloth decay, creating the false impression that only rulers wrote.

Read this excerpt from a 1917 British War Office telegram: 'Supply lines to the front sector interrupted by heavy bombardment.' State the source category and one question you must ask about its reliability.

This is a documentary text (official military correspondence). A historian must ask whether the officer reported accurate facts or minimized operational failures to avoid reprimand from headquarters.

You locate a letter in the US National Archives with the call number RG 59, Box 14, Entry 302. Explain why recording this reference code matters when writing history.

It provides the archival provenance, allowing other historians to verify the source, inspect the surrounding context of the file, and maintain academic honesty in citation.