This concluding section surveys contemporary historical practice and theory. As the previous section has demonstrated, there are many branches of history today, each with different kinds of evidence, particular canons of interpretation, and distinctive conventions of writing. This diversity has led some to wonder whether the term history still designates an integral body of or approach to knowledge. Although the emphasis of this article falls on what historians share, it is well to remember that deviations from these norms are always lurking. The oldest source, oral history, is also in some ways the newest. ... (100 of 41,365 words)Methodology of historiography
The historian’s sources
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Cuneiform tablet featuring a tally of sheep and goats, from Tello in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).
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Oracle bone inscriptions from the village of Xiaotun, Henan province, China; Shang dynasty, 14th or 12th century bce.
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Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea; illustration from a German Bible, 15th century.
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Herodotus, detail of a Roman herm probably copied from a Greek original of the first half of the 4th century bce; in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
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Thucydides manuscript, 3rd century bce, Hamburg, Staats und Universitatsbibliothek, P. Hamburg 163.
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The ruins of the Roman Forum, Rome, Italy.
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St. Mark, illuminated manuscript page from the Gospel Book of the Court school of Charlemagne, c. 810; in the Statsbibliothek, Trier, Ger.
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St. Augustine in His Study, oil on canvas by Vittore Carpaccio, c. 1502.
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Page from a manuscript of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
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Cairo Qurʾān, Maghribi script, 18th century.
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Petrarch, engraving.
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Flavio Biondo, portrait from Paulus Jovius’s “Elogia,” 1517.
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Niccolò Machiavelli, oil on canvas by Santi di Tito; in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
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Self-portrait by Giorgio Vasari, oil on canvas; in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
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Portrait of Martin Luther, oil on panel by Lucas Cranach, 1529; in the Uffizi, Florence.
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Justinian I, in a 6th-century mosaic, at the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy.
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René Descartes.
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Montesquieu, detail of an oil painting dated 1718; in the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux, France.
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Portrait of Voltaire, c. 1740.
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Edward Gibbon, oil painting by Henry Walton, 1774; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Johann Gottfried von Herder, detail of an oil painting by Gerhard von Kügelgen, 1808; in the Library of Tartu State University, Estonia.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, oil painting by Jakob von Schlesinger, 1825; in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
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Jules Michelet, detail of an oil painting by Thomas Couture; in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.
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Leopold von Ranke, detail of an oil painting by J. Schrader, 1868; in the National-Galerie, Berlin.
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Auguste Comte, drawing by Tony Toullion, 19th century; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
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Frederick Jackson Turner.
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Karl Marx, c. 1870.
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The Holy Family, oil painting by Giorgione, c. 1508; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
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A visitor looking at enigmatic American artist Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans at the Tate Modern in London, Feb. 5, 2002.
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Samuel Johnson, painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1756–57; in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Adam Smith, paste medallion by James Tassie, 1787; in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
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Queen Elizabeth of England, portrait in oil by an unknown artist, English, 16th century; in the Pitti Palace, Florence.