# Glossary

Antiquarian
  A person interested in ‘antiquities’ (ancient things) from previous times, particularly objects, buildings and cultural products

Bloody Code
  A series of laws from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that attached the death penalty to a wide range of offences

Capital punishment
  The death sentence and execution for those found guilty of certain crimes

Cartouche
  A design image of a scroll usually used in a heraldic manner

GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping
  A digital information system using satellite technology for accurate geographical recording

Historiography
  The chronological ongoing writing of the history of a particular topic; essentially the history of a history!

Method
  How historians approach, use and analyse their primary source evidence, for example they might use a statistical or geographical method

Periodisation
  How historians divide time into manageable and identifiable sections with particular characteristics

Post-revisionist
  A critique of a revisionist view or argument, not necessarily reactionary or reverting to a pre-revisionist position

Primary source
  Something that dates from the time under examination and provides evidence of the past, legal records, maps, images, documents, buildings, artefacts and even hedgerows can all be primary sources

Revisionist
  A reinterpretation of a long-established or traditional view or understanding

Secondary source
  A piece of produced written history from research, this could be a text or a database of information for example

OpenLearn - What do historians do?
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