Historical sources can be classified into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary sources on the basis of their originity. These classes are useful in understanding various historical sources and their authenticity.
1. Primary Sources
Primary sources are firsthand accounts created at the time of historical event occurred or are records of original ideas. Because they were created when or soon after the events happened, they are usually more useful to historians than secondary sources. Examples of primary sources are diaries, photographs, manuscripts, inscriptions, maps, arts, paintings, archaeological sites, etc.
Primary sources consists of information that has not been analysed, commented on or interpreted. It can be biased, depending on the viewpoint of the author as of other group of sources. It can be used when you need an exact account of event or idea without influence of other writers.
2. Secondary Sources
Secondary sources offer commentary, analysis or interpretation of primary sources. They are written many years after an event or by people not directly involved in the event. Historians draw on secondary sources either by quoting or paraphrasing in order to support certain claims that they're making/challenging or supplement prevailing interpretations that other historians have made in their works of historiography.
It can be biased, depending on the viewpoint of the author. For example, reviews, encyclopaedia, etc.
3. Tertiary Sources
Tertiary sources are those writings, books or articles based exclusively on secondary sources i.e. on the research of others. They are usually synthetic in nature that means, they pull together a number of separate but related accounts of a particular event, issue, body of scholarship, etc.
Tertiary sources are good starting point for the research projects as they help distill large amounts of information. Often tertiary sources contain footnotes that point researchers in promising directions with respect to the secondary sources. You are reading this article is a best example of tertiary source as we are writing this article by using various secondary sources.
Next Article:
1. Literary Sources
2. Archaeological Dating Methods
References
Also see:
1. Coins
4. Literary Sources
5. Archaeological Exploration & Excavations
6. Bharatvarsha
7. UGC NET JRF Latest Syllabus
8. Inscriptions
