Understanding Historical Data

Historical Data

• Historical data includes information, records, and evidence from the past.
• It enables the analysis, study, and interpretation of historical events, cultures, and societies.
• This data forms the foundation of historical research.
• It helps historians reconstruct and understand past events.
• Historical data originates from artifacts (relics, remains) and testimonies.
• These sources give historians the ability to construct meaning and interpretations of past events.

Types of Historical Data

Artifacts

• Artifacts are human-created or used physical objects.
• They offer tangible evidence of past cultures, technologies, and daily life.
• Tools, pottery, weapons, and coins are examples.

Relics

• Relics consist of objects or remains surviving from the past.
• They are often valued for their historical, cultural, or religious significance.
• Sacred texts, bones of saints, jewelry, and clothing are examples.

Testimonies

• Testimonies are historical data that include firsthand or secondhand accounts of past events.
• These accounts come from individuals who witnessed or experienced those events.
• Testimonies may be oral (spoken) or written.
• Interviews, speeches, and recorded testimonies are examples of oral testimonies.
• Journals, letters, autobiographies, and official records are examples of written testimonies.

Sources of History

• Written and non-written sources of history exist.

Written Sources of History

• Written sources are usually categorized into narrative or literary, diplomatic or juridical, and social documents.

Narrative or Literature

• Narrative, or literature consists of chronicles or tracts presented in narrative form, written to impart a message whose motives for their composition vary widely.
• Scientific tracts inform contemporaries or succeeding generations.
• Newspaper articles shape opinion.
• Ego documents (diaries, memoirs) persuade readers of the justice of the author's actions.
• Novels or films entertain, deliver moral teachings, or further religious causes.
• Biographies praise the subject's worth and achievements.

Diplomatic Sources

• Diplomatic sources were once considered the purest and "best" source by professional historians.
• Charters (permission slips) or legal instruments are sealed, meaning the document is authenticated.
• They provide evidence that a legal transaction has been completed.
• It can be used as evidence in judicial proceedings.
• They are issued by authorities such as kings, popes, the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and the Philippine Congress.
• Specific formal properties include hand and print style, ink, the seal, and rhetorical devices and images.
• They vary in time and according to origin; each generation possesses its own norms, and each bureaucracy has its own traditions.

Social Documents

• Social documents contain information related to economic, social, political, or judicial significance.
• Bureaucracies keep these records.
• Government reports, municipal accounts, research findings, parliamentary procedures, civil registry records, property registers, and records of census are examples of such documents.

Non-Written Sources of History

• Unwritten sources are as essential as written sources.
• They include material evidence and oral evidence.

Material Evidence

• Also known as archaeological evidence, is a crucial form of unwritten evidence.
• Artistic creations/artifacts, pottery, jewelry, dwellings, graves, churches, and roads tell stories of the past.
• Drawings, etchings, paintings, films, and photographs are visual representations of the past.

Oral Evidence

• Is an important source of information for historians.
• Tales, sagas of ancient peoples, folk songs, and rituals are examples from the premodern period of Philippine history.
• Interviews are another major form of oral evidence in the present age.

Historical Sources

• These are materials historians use to learn about the past.

Primary Sources

• Primary Sources are original records of an event by people who experienced or witnessed it.
• Letters, diaries, journals, newspaper articles, government documents, photographs, and creative outputs are examples.

Secondary Sources

• Secondary sources analyze and interpret primary sources; a second-hand account of a historical event.
• Biographies, histories, literary criticism, and books written by a third party about a historical event are examples.

Explore historical data, including artifacts, relics, and testimonies. Learn how these sources enable the analysis, study, and interpretation of past events, cultures, and societies. Understand their importance in historical research and interpretation.