Week 1

• Historical research: establish facts with respect to the past based on sources analysis
• To answer research question:

  1. General knowledge of available sources
  2. Development of topic
  3. Research into topic to assemble corpus
  4. Development of research question
  5. Fine-tuning source corpusvaluate sources, synthesis
• Sources are not facts.
• A historical fact is an aspect of the past about which scholars have reached consensus of opinion, based on interpretation of sources.
• It is important to have an overview of ancient sources to select appropriate topics and formulate answerable research questions.
• Written source is an ancient writing that can be a source for history, where it was meant “historiographical” or not.
• Evidence is biased towards what was written down and what of this written material has survived.
• The spectrum of ancient written sources is dependent on processes of selection, factors determining the production, different degrees of literacy, geographical and chronological differences, and potential limitations.
• Potential limitations of written sources include who they represent (small populations = elites), where and when, and various centres of writing production.
• Factors determining preservation of written sources include how they were transmitted to us, medium, places of study.
• Transmission of written sources is often limited, fragmentary, without contexts, and affected by bias of different groups throughout time.
• Consequences for researcher using written sources include not having enough sources for a representative sample, risk of arguing from absence, and quantitative analysis often being impossible.
• Non-continuous transmission of sources can be due to rediscovery through archaeology, sometimes requiring decipherment of a forgotten language.
• Continuous transmissions of sources are passed down through time, some texts are copied or intended for transmission, and even copies are subject to change: revisions, additions, and canonisation process.
• Context is crucial for understanding the meaning and function of human activity.
• Written sources from Archaic Greece (Mycene) were in Linear B on clay and stone, used for administration only, written by professional scribes, with other facts of life not represented.
• Linear A texts from Minoans (Crete) are extant but undeciphered.
• Secondary contexts are through natural forces or human interaction.
• Both written and ‘unwritten’ sources are valuable, with the former being fundamental and the latter creating nuance or correcting views based on the written sources.
• The span of time from late 4th millenium BCE to early centuries CE was covered by cuneiform script, which was used in Akkadian, Sumerian, and Hittite.
• Artifacts are objects modified by people, showing function (storage, cooking) and beliefs.
• Demotic was mostly used for business texts and literature.
• Hieroglyphs, the monumental/ornamental form of Egyptian writing, and hieratic, the cursive form, were used in Ancient Egypt.
• The earliest Greek texts were dedications to gods, short texts on pottery, and law texts.
• Cuneiform script was used for various genres including economic/business, administrative, astronomical/mathematical, and medical.
• Primary contexts are plasters casts in Pompeii.
• Written sources from Ancient Egypt were in different forms of ancient Egyptian languages: old, middle, late, demotic and coptic.
• Through antiquity, there was an increasing number of administrative texts in Latin and Greek on a variety of media, especially papyrus and parchment, which were highly suitable for writing longer texts.
• Greek was also used in Ancient Egypt after Alexander’s conquest, influencing Coptic.
• Human-created and natural objects, supported by air photography, cartography, and surveying by satellite, can be interpreted as sources.
• The role of place and provenance in text criticism is to identify the find place and the date of a text.
• The role of internal clues and analysis of form in text criticism includes style, technique, and material.
• The Tabularium at the Forum Romanum was a place for collecting texts in Rome.
• Cornelius Sulla's function in text criticism is debated.
• The "State archive" of decrees, contracts, treaties, and military diplomata was a collection of texts maintained by Cornelius Sulla.
• Private collections of texts, such as the Babatha Archive, are examples of non-official archives.
• Babatha, a Jewish woman from an upper middle class, flourished between 104-134 CE and was born in Mahoza.
• Babatha kept her legal documents with her, a pouch with legal documents relating to marriage contracts, guardianship, and property transfers ranging from 96 to 134 CE.
• Identifying the author of a text is usually possible in literary texts, where the author is usually known by name and occasional use of pseudonyms is common.
• In documentary texts, it is often multiple people involved in conceiving the content.