SOURCES OF HISTORICAL
DATA The historians deal with the dynamic or
HISTORICAL DATA
● Sourced from artifacts that have
been left by the past.
● Can either be relics or remains or
the testimonies of witnesses to
the past.
● Thus, historical sources are those
materials from which historians
construct meaning.
● Relics or remains, offer
researchers a clue about the
past.
● Artifacts can be found where
relics if human happenings can
be found, for example, a
potsherd, a coin, a ruin, a
manuscript, a book, a portrait, a
stamp, a piece of wreckage, a
strand of hair, or other
archaeological or anthropological
remains.
● Testimonies of witnesses,
whether oral or written, may have
been created to serve as records
or they might have been created
for some other purposes.
● The lives of human beings can be
assumed from the retrieved
artifacts, but without further
evidence the human contexts of
these artifacts can never be
recaptured with any degree of
certainty.
genetic (the becoming) as well as the
static (the being) and aims at being
interpretative (explaining why and how
things happened and were interrelated)
as well as descriptive (telling what
happened, when and where, and who
took part).
WRITTEN SOURCES OF HISTORY
● Written sources are usually
categorized in three ways:
1) narrative or literary,
2) diplomatic or juridical, and
3) social documents.
NARRATIVE OR LITERATURE
● Are chronicles or tracts presented
in narrative form, written to impart
a message whose motives for
their composition vary widely.
Examples:
❖ A scientific tract is typically in
order to inform contemporaries
or succeeding generations
❖ A newspaper article might be
intended to shape opinion
❖ The so-called ego document or
personal narrative such as
diary or memoir in order to
persuade readers
❖ A novel or film for
entertainment
● A narrative source is therefore
broader than what is usually
considered fiction(Howell &
Prevenier, 2001)
 DIPLOMATIC SOURCES property registers, and records of
census.

● Are understood to be those which

document/record an existing legal NON-WRITTEN SOURCES OF
situation or create a new one, HISTORY
and it is these kinds of sources
that professional historians once MATERIAL EVIDENCE
treated as the purest, the “best”
source.
● known as archeological evidence
● The classic diplomatic source
is one of the most important
is the charter, which is a legal
unwritten evidences. This
instrument.
includes artistic creations such as
● A legal document is usually
pottery, jewelry, dwellings,
sealed or authenticated to
graves, churches, roads, and
provide evidence that a legal
others that tell a story about the
transaction has been completed
past.
and can be used as evidence in a
● These artifacts can tell a great
judicial proceeding in case of
deal about the ways of life of
dispute.
people in the past, and their
● Diplomatic Sources possess
culture.
specific formal properties, such
● Can also reveal about the
as hand and print style, the ink,
socio-cultural interconnections of
the seal, for external properties
the different groups of people
and rhetorical devices and
especially when an object is
images for internal properties,
unearthed in more than one
which are determined by the
place.
norms of laws and by tradition.
● Commercial exchange is also
revealed by the presence of
SOCIAL DOCUMENTS artifacts in different places.
● Historians can get substantial
● Are information pertaining to information from drawings,
economic, social, political, or etchings, paintings, films, and
judicial significance. They are photographs.
records kept by bureaucracies.
For example, government
reports, such as municipal
accounts, research findings, and
documents like parliamentary
procedures, civil registry records,
 ORAL EVIDENCE
● Also an important source of
information for historians.
● Much is told by the tales and
sagas of ancient peoples and the
folk songs or popular rituals from
the premodern period
Philippine history.
● Interviews in another major form
of oral evidence.
provide valuable interpretations
of historical events.
● Analyzes and interprets primary
sources
● Interpretation of second-hand
account of historical events
● Examples : biographies, histories,
literary criticism, books written by
of a third party about a historical
event, art and theater reviews,
newspaper or journal articles that
interpret.

PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY

SOURCES

PRIMARY SOURCES

● Original, first-hand account of an

event or period that is usually
written or made during or close to
the event or period.
● These sources are original and
factual, not interpretative.
● The key is to provide facts.
● Examples : diaries, journals, letters,
newspaper and magazine articles
(factual accounts), government
records, photographs, maps,
posters, recorded or transcribed
speeches, interviews with
participants, paintings, sculptures,
and drawings.

SECONDARY SOURCES

● Are materials made by people

long after the events being
described had taken place to