Using Non Textual Sources

This text guides history students through the process of interpreting non-textual sources. It introduces a range of non-textual sources used by historians and offers practical guidance on how to interpret them and incorporate them into essays and dissertations. In addition to this, the book posits a theoretical framework that justifies the use of these items as historical sources and explains how they can be used to further understand the past. There is coverage of the creation, production and distribution of non-textual sources; the acquisition of skills to 'read' these sources analytically; and the meaning, significance and reliability of these forms of evidence. The book also includes a section on interdisciplinary non-textual source work, outlining what historians borrow from disciplines such as art history, archaeology, geography and media studies, as well as a discussion of how to locate resources online and elsewhere in order to use them in essays and dissertations. Case studies, such as the Tudor religious propaganda painting Edward VI and the Pope, the 1954 John Ford Western The Searchers and the Hereford Mappa Mundi, are employed throughout to illustrate the functions of main source types. Photographs, cartoons, maps, artwork, audio clips, film, places and artifacts are all explored in a text that provides students with a comprehensive, cohesive, and practical guide to using non-textual sources.--description from publisher's website.