understanding the outcomes |
activity |
In this core unit you will fulfil the following outcomes:
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The outcomes to the left are repeated throughout your preliminary and HSC year. The key to success in the HSC is understanding what you are required to do. Knowing what is meant by the ‘outcomes’ is fundamental to doing the right thing.
With this in mind, attempt to re-write the above outcomes in your own words: |
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"As soon as we die, we enter into fiction.
Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for ourselves, we are interpreted. When we remember – as psychologists so often tell us – we don’t reproduce the past, we create it. Surely, you may say – some truths are non-negotiable, the facts of history guide us. And the records do indeed throw up some facts and figures that admit no dispute. But the historian Patrick Collinson wrote: ‘It is possible for competent historians to come to radically different conclusions on the basis of the same evidence. Because, of course, 99% of the evidence, above all, unrecorded speech, is not available to us.’
Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past - it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more ‘the past’ than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that. Historians are sometimes scrupulous and self-aware, sometimes careless or biased. Yet in either case, and hardly knowing which is which, we cede them moral authority."
Hilary Mantel, 2017, Reith Lecture
historians |
archaeologists |
History can help us understand the present and why something is likely to happen because of examples we have from the past. It is something that is shared by all of us, no one group of people can 'own' history, but we can have different opinions on history, for example why something happened. More importantly, history has the potential to be forgotten or destroyed and efforts must be put towards preserving history so that it is accessible to different groups in the future.
Historians are people who study the written records of the past. These written sources of history can tell us what people did, who they were, when they lived and died and why they did what they did. Studying the past helps us build up a picture of what life was like, not just hundreds of years ago, but sometimes thousands of years ago. Everything around us has a history and a past. Some societies have written histories with writings going back thousands of years. Studying history can show us how we have changed over time, how our society has evolved and progressed. It can show us how the languages and life and technology of a society have changed, although its basic cultural and moral principles have remained the same. History can also show us how our world is connected to the past. History is not just the study of famous rulers, or wars that took place hundreds of years ago. It is also the study of the individuals who were alive at the time of those events. It might have been only men fighting in the wars but they left behind wives and children. By looking at a lot of differing stories and accounts of the past we can build a fuller picture of our history. In some cases, though, we will never be able to fully recover the facts of the past. Historians sometimes then have to use what they have learned to make what is really an educated guess as to why something has happened. This is why historians can sometimes come to different conclusions about the same event. Our written history is based on what the historians write. They research a topic by reading other historians' work and they look up and investigate other information sources. What they write is also based on the judgements and values that they bring with them to the subject. A particular religious or political belief can sometimes influence how a historian views an event or a person. This means we always have to be careful when investigating history that we do not let other people's opinions, or our own, get in the way of the facts. |
Archaeology studies human history from the development of the first stone tools in eastern Africa 3.4 million years ago up until recent decades. It is of most importance for learning about prehistoric societies, when there are no written records for historians to study, making up over 99% of total human history, from the Palaeolithic until the advent of literacy in any given society. Archaeology has various goals, which range from studying human evolution to understanding culture history.
The discipline involves surveyance, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. The purpose of archaeology is to learn more about past societies and the development of the human race. Over 99% of the history of humanity has occurred within prehistoric cultures. Without written sources, the only way to learn about prehistoric societies is to use archaeology. Many important developments in human history occurred during prehistory, including the evolution of humanity during the Palaeolithic period, when the hominins developed through to modern Homo sapiens. Archaeology also sheds light on many of humanity's technological advances, for instance the ability to use fire, the development of stone tools, metallurgy, religion and agriculture. However, it is not only prehistoric, pre-literate cultures that can be studied using archaeology but historic, literate cultures as well, through the sub-discipline of historical archaeology. For many literate cultures, such as Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, their surviving records are often incomplete and biased to some extent. In many societies, literacy was restricted to the elite classes, such as the clergy or the bureaucracy of court or temple. The literacy even of aristocrats has sometimes been restricted to deeds and contracts. The interests and world-view of elites are often quite different from the lives and interests of the populace. Writings that were produced by people more representative of the general population were unlikely to find their way into libraries and be preserved there for posterity. Thus, written records tend to reflect the biases, assumptions, cultural values and possibly deceptions of a limited range of individuals, usually a small fraction of the larger population. Hence, written records cannot be trusted as a sole source. The material record may be closer to a fair representation of society. |
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sources |
evidence |
A source is anything that has survived from the past it can be either written or archeological. A source should not be confused with evidence. The source is the raw material that they historian uses to ask questions of the past.
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Evidence is the information that tends to prove or disprove a conclusion, to establish a fact or point in a question. A source does not become evidence until it is used to prove or disprove something.
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source criticism |
this is Otzi the Iceman's mummified body - look it up. |
The following core principles of source criticism were formulated by two Scandinavian historians, Olden-Jørgensen (1998) and Thurén (1997):
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literary |
epigraphic |
numismatic |
Literary sources include the writing of people in the ancient world such as historians, biographers, playwrights, poets, orators, letter writers etc.
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Epigraphic sources are those that are inscribed on clay, metal, stone or papyrus. They may include graffiti.
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Numismatic sources are coins that often contain images of key figures; religious symbols, and sometimes words or even dates.
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primary sources |
secondary sources |
A primary source comes from the same time as the person or event being studied. If it is an artefact, it is an object that was made or constructed in the period being studied. In the case of a written source it is something that was written or reported at that time.
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A secondary source is something written about or copied from the past by people living in another time, for example: a school textbook, a movie, a historical novel, or replicas of an artefact are all secondary sources.
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questioning written sources |
questioning archaeological sources |
When examining a written source it is important to question the source in order to establish what it means or tells us. Some of the questions that must be asked are below:
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When examining archaeological sources, it is important to ask specific questions about the nature and purpose of the source. Some of the questions that must be asked are below:
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climate |
geological conditions |
human actions |
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warfare |
theft |
tourism |
nature |
pollution |
The birth of Christ
The invention of writing The first city developed; Jericho The Sydney Olympic games The development of agriculture The collapse of the Spartan society Agrippina II born in Germany The death of Tutankhamun Earliest code of laws written Sumer James Cook navigates Australia's east coast Paleolithic age Neolithic age The eruption of Thera The end of the ancient world Copper age Death of Cleopatra Renaissance begins The Trojan War Bronze age Eruption of Vesuvius Pompeii preserved Iron age |
year dot
3500 BCE 8000 BCE 2000 CE 6000 BCE 321 BCE 15 CE 1400 BCE 2500 BCE 1770 CE 10, 000 BCE 8000 to 5000 BCE 1620 BCE 900 CE 5000 to 3000 BCE 32 BCE 1400 CE 1300 BCE 3000 to 1000 BCE 79 CE 1000 BCE onwards |
the three age system of dating |
questions |
The three-age system refers to the periodisation of human prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies:
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