A second goal of this exercise is to have you analyze and use  the historical sources available on the web. Specifically, you are being asked to find, categorize and analyze sources, and to draw conclusions based on those materials. There is a tremendous amount of material available on the web - to be able to be your own historian - life long - you need to develop your abilities to find, assess and use those sources.

An important distinction to keep in mind as you surf the Internet for historical sources is that there are two principle kinds of sources that help us to trace history and the experience of people in the past.

PRIMARY SOURCES:   These are sources or pieces of evidence that come FROM the particular time period. Examples would be personal letters or diaries written by people living during the period being studied, governmental documents or records from that period, and original texts in areas such as religion or literature. Newspaper articles from the time period being studied help you to understand what people were thinking and feeling at that time as well.  Recognize, art is another source of primary material - sculptures, paintings, carvings and architecture also reflect the hearts, minds and experiences of people in the past in a direct manner. Even maps are primary sources - IF they come from the time period and culture being studied - their maps show us how they viewed the world at that time.

We have already used primary sources in our links -for example the cave paintings of the Paleolithic period or the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi. The key idea is that primary sources are raw information - no one has interpreted them for you or filtered, digested or analyzed the material for you. The understanding of that material is left to each person reading that text or looking at the art work. It is the really exciting part of history - working with information or material from an age or particular culture and coming to your own conclusions.

SECONDARY SOURCES:   Secondary sources do represent someone's interpretation - the opinion or analysis of material by someone who was not there (usually a scholar or historian.)  Most of the materials we read or use in history are secondary sources. Secondary sources include texts or books on a particular subject, (usually called monographs), or articles and essays explaining a particular issue or period in history. In a secondary source, someone is interpreting the raw information for you and presenting historical conclusions for you to accept or disagree with - but the key point is the analysis has already been done. You as the reader and historian then learn from that analysis and react to it.  Secondary sources are very important in helping to gain a general understanding of topics from those who have spent some time studying and analyzing the past; then you can dig deeper and help frame your own understanding through reading primary sources.

Using the links from class units - or exploring on your own on the web, you need to complete three parts of the assignment:
 

1. Find and describe TWO PRIMARY sources that are from the civilizations or time periods that we have covered or will be covering in the scope of our History 151 class.  You should give me the URL, (the http address on the web) and also a brief description of what the material/document/item is that you have found and how it is an example of a primary document.

2. For both of these TWO primary sources - you need to draw some conclusions about what you learn from these sources, in other words, provide your own, independent analysis.  Explain what kind of conclusions you draw as an historian from this material (and focus ONLY this source - not what a secondary interpretation tells you about this source.  What do YOU conclude by looking at it).  Using this source, what would you conclude about the historical period or experience that this material came from?  Be the historian - using the primary source to come up with conclusions.

Spend some time on this analysis - this is the key part of this assignment where you are to draw your thoughtful historical conclusions and tell what you learn about that civilization and period by analyzing this source.

3. Find and describe two examples of SECONDARY sources on the web. Again, give me the URL and a brief description of what you have found and how it is an example of a secondary source.