The historical jigsaw puzzle
History begins with sources, the material and textual traces of the past. Anything can be an historical source - letters, legal records, financial accounts, literary narratives, paintings, photographs, buildings, discarded rubbish, postcards, tombstones, stained-glass windows, graffiti, royal writs, rebellious pamphlets… anything, in fact, which offers the possibility of catching a small glimpse of the past.
The task for someone who wants to do history is firstly to understand how best to catch that glimpse, and secondly, to explore how the first fragment might be connected to a second, and then a third, and so on.
'... using snatches of past knowledge we can build up a composite picture of an historical event ...'
Through stitching together these small snatches of past knowledge we can build up a composite picture of an historical event or theme or person. The task is therefore something like compiling a jigsaw puzzle. However, it is a strange, rather fluid jigsaw. The pieces uncovered can be made to fit in a number of different ways, and the pictures thus revealed can differ, according to the routes taken.
The picture built of the past is therefore affected by two factors. The first is the demands, possibilities, and limitations of each piece of historical evidence - what it says, what it suggests, what we think of it in terms of truth, bias and opinion. The second factor is more subjective, and involves what each one of us brings to our pursuit of the past - what kind of picture we want to uncover, what interpretation we place on our evidence, what direction we have chosen to follow.
Published: 28-01-2005
