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Name the question a source cannot settle, say why its silence is not a no, and say what would have to be found before anybody could answer it.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
By the end of this lesson you can look at a source, name a question it cannot settle, and say what would have to be found before anybody could settle it. You will learn why a source saying nothing about a thing is not the same as saying no to it, and why an open question is the beginning of a piece of work rather than the end of one.
Ashfield is not a real village. Nobody has ever lived there, and nobody ever wrote the list below. We invented it at the school so that you can practise reading a source before you meet a real one. A made-up source is safe to practise on, but it is not evidence about the past. The only thing it is evidence about is us, because we are the ones who wrote it.
Imagine a shopkeeper called Bel. At the end of one day she writes down what she has sold, so that she will remember it tomorrow. This is the list she writes.
Bel wrote her list to remember, not to explain. She did not write down why the baker wanted flour. She did not write down who came into the shop and bought nothing at all. A list tells you what the person writing it wanted to keep track of, and it stops there.
You can say what a source states, who made it and why, how far it reaches, and what two sources together carry. Every one of those is about what you have. This lesson is about what you have not got.
A question is open when the sources you have cannot settle it. A source is silent about everything it never mentions. To settle an open question you need new evidence — something somebody has to go and find, dig up, or read somewhere else. Naming what that would be is the whole of this lesson.
Bel's made-up list tells you she sold 3 sacks of flour to the baker. It does not tell you what the baker paid, or why he wanted so much, or who came into the shop and bought nothing. Reading it again more carefully will not help: the words are not there.
That is not the list failing. A source only ever holds what its maker needed that day. What it leaves out is left out because somebody was busy doing something else, and the honest answer to a question it cannot settle is this source cannot say.
But the honest answer is not the last answer. Say what would settle it. A price list would settle what the baker paid. A note from home would settle why three children were away. A photograph would settle what the room looked like. Naming the missing source is what turns a shrug into a piece of work.
Another way: picture
Think of a jigsaw with real holes in it. Saying this piece is missing is not the same as saying the picture is useless, and it is not the same as guessing what the piece looked like. It is knowing which shape to go and look for.
Another way: story
If you find a ticket in a coat pocket you know somebody bought a ticket. You do not know whether they went. To find that out you would need something else — a photograph from the day, or somebody who was there.
Two mistakes, and they pull in opposite directions. The first is filling the gap with a guess and then calling the guess evidence. The second is deciding that a source with a gap is no use at all — when a list that cannot tell you about bread is still very good evidence about flour. Say what is missing, keep what is not, and name what would settle the rest.
The list says 3 sacks of flour went to the baker. Ask what he paid.
Start from what the source really does say.
There is no price anywhere on the list, so the honest answer is: this list cannot say.
Reading it again will not put a price on it.
Now say what would settle it: a list of Bel's prices, if she kept one, or the baker's own note of what he spent.
That sentence is the useful part, and it is the part nobody can mark for you.
The clay tablet counts sacks of grain and says nothing about what anybody ate.
So it cannot settle what they ate — and it still settles that somebody was counting, and that somebody could write.
One gap is not a verdict on the whole source.
What would settle the eating? Bones and seeds dug up from the same place, which is a different kind of source altogether.
New evidence is often not more writing.
Here is a source, and then five questions about it. Mark the two this source cannot settle on its own.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Bel's made-up shop list is at the top of this lesson. Three questions about it: what it settles, what its silence means, and what would have to be found to settle the rest.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
None of these three questions can be settled by the sources you have already read. Match each one to the thing that would have to be found before anybody could answer it.
| another tablet from the same store saying whose grain it was | the words of a song, written down at the time | what is left of the building, dug up and measured | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owned the grain the clay tablet counts? | |||
| What the people there sang? | |||
| How big the store building was? |
Bel's made-up shop list never mentions bread. What follows from that?
Nothing here is old and all of it is a source. Mark the one question this source cannot settle.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Here is a source, and then five questions about it. Mark the two this source cannot settle on its own.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
You can say which questions a source cannot settle, explain that its silence is not a no, and name the kind of source that would settle an open question. Ask one question today that the thing in front of you cannot answer, and say out loud what would answer it.