For Year 8 Gone but not forgotten unit

1. STUDYING
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
Ms McCarthy and Ms Suter
Belmont High School

2. How do we find out about
what happened in
medieval times?

3. We can divide our sources of
information about the past into two
categories
• PRIMARY SOURCES
• SECONDARY SOURCES

4. •PRIMARY
SOURCES
These are things
that are written or
made during the
time being
studied.
First hand
information
•SECONDARY
SOURCES
These are things
written or made
after the time
being studied.
Second hand
information that is
often based on
primary sources

5. Examples of primary sources
All these must have come from the time being
studied
• Photos
• Artefacts
• Autobiographies
• Film/video footage
• Letters
• Speeches
• Paintings
• Drawings
• Maps
• Documents
• Bones
• Ruins
• Fossils
• Graves/tombs
• Cave paintings
• Newspapers
• Voice recordings
• Diaries/journals
• Log books
• Posters

6. Examples of secondary sources
These are usually made long after the time being studied
• Text books
• Movies
• Newspapers
• Pamphlets
• Nonfiction books
• Fiction books
• Encyclopaedias
• Websites
• T.V shows
• Models
• Replicas
• documentaries
• Teachers’ notes
• Students’ essays/assignments
• Biographies

7. Why are primary
sources important
when studying history?

8. Primary sources are important when
studying history because…
You are seeing the original thing that
has not been altered so you can make
your own opinion of it. No one is
telling you what to think!

9. Secondary sources are important
when studying history because…
they can explain things and give
you a range of ideas about what
might have happened. They are
someone else’s opinion.

10. Are photos
of primary
sources
counted as
primary
sources?
http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.wikispaces.com/WHI.7

11. Are
translations
of original
texts
counted as
primary
sources?

12. ORIGINAL TEXT TRANSLATION
• A great mortality ... destroyed more
than a third of the men, women and
children. As a result, there was such a
shortage of servants, craftsmen, and
workmen, and of agricultural workers
and labourers, that a great many lords
and people, although well-endowed
with goods and possessions, were yet
without service and attendance. Alas,
this mortality devoured such a
multitude of both sexes that no one
could be found to carry the bodies of
the dead to burial, but men and
women carried the bodies of their own
little ones to church on their shoulders
and threw them into mass graves, from
which arose such a stink that it was
barely possible for anyone to go past a
churchyard.

13. Yes, photos of primary sources can be
counted as primary sources (as students can’t visit
museums around the world to view the actual artefacts).
Yes, translations of primary sources can be
considered primary sources as long as they
are “word for word” translations - as far as
possible. (Is the translator an expert?)

14. Authenticity
How do you know the
primary source is really
from medieval times?

15. Authenticity
To work out the source’s authenticity you have to identify its origin (WHEN and WHERE it came from and WHO
created it).
This can be really difficult!
If you can’t identify (find) it’s origin and you still want to use it, you need to note this in your work.
For example;
This diagram shows the farming style of peasants in medieval times (origin unknown).
http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.wik
ispaces.com/WHI.7

16. "Cleric, Knight and Workman
representing the three classes a
French School illustration from Li
Livres dou Santé (late 13th
century)
folio 85, British
Library/Bridgeman Art Library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi
ddle_Ages

17. Another way or determining the authenticity of
the primary source is evaluating the reliability of
the secondary source where you found it (usually
a website or a book).
Eg: a Museum website should be a reliable
source. Is Wikipedia a reliable resource?
Remember CRRaP (evaluation)

18. Do all primary sources
give an accurate picture
of the past?

19. RELIABILITY AND ACCURACY
When evaluating the reliability and accuracy of
primary source information consider the context in
which it was created (setting, situation, background of
its creation)
• Who created the primary source? Their PERSPECTIVE
• Why was it created? PURPOSE
• What was the knowledge or understanding of the person
who created it?

20. Primary source
An account of the black death by
Michael Platiensis 1357.
Translated by C. H. Clarke 1926

21. Alphonse Pellion’s Baie des Chiens-Marins: Observatoire de L’Uranie
1818

22. Original and
unofficial
version.

23. The official
published
version

24. CORROBORATION
Adding strength or support to an
idea/information (found in the sources you
have located as part of your research).

25. CORROBORATION
Why should you look at more than one source of
information?
Source
1.
Source
3
Source
2

26. CORROBORATION
More than one source should:
• help you work out if the information you have found is
RELIABLE because if another source gives the same or
similar information then you can have more trust in its
ACCURACY (one source is corroborating another).
If two sources contradict each other you go to other sources.

27. Black Death song

28. What could this picture tell you about medieval times?
origin unknown
http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.wikispaces.com/WHI.7

29. What does this picture tell you about medieval times?
origin unknown
http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.wikispaces.com/WHI.7

30. What does this picture tell you about medieval times?
origin unknown

31. What does this picture tell us about medieval times?
origin unknown
http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.wikispaces.com/WHI.7