History Analyzing Ancient Spartan Society Essay

Write it about this source A primary source is an artifact that was created at the time under study and was more or less contemporaneous with the events, people, or places it describes or represents. Primary sources can be textual (a memoir, a letter, a legal code, tax record, etc.), visual (a photograph, painting, architecture, etc.), auditory (sound recording), audio-visual (film or video with sound, etc.), or some other contemporaneous record. Primary sources are differentiated from secondary sources, the articles and books written by historians and other scholars, and tertiary sources, which are textbooks, documentaries, and other syntheses of secondary sources.For the draft Analytical Essay on a Primary Source, you will analyze one primary source from among those assigned in the Discussion Boards for Weeks 2-4 (the primary sources for Week 1 are not appropriate for this assignment). At the end of the month, you will submit a more complete version of this same paper. For this assignment, you do not have to determine whether a given artifact is a primary source or not. In each Discussion Board Topic, one or more primary sources are clearly identified as such.Primary sources are what historians and other scholars study when they try to make sense of the past. However, interpreting such sources is rarely as straightforward as we would like, and the sources are not mere mirrors of the world that historians want to understand. We are obliged, therefore, to use our critical thinking skills, particularly our interpretive skills. To interpret primary sources, we ask questions of them, considering the contexts of their production and uncovering their inherent biases to decipher what they do and don’t reveal to us about the past. Finally, we employ our skills at logical argumentation to convince others of the validity of our interpretations.Start by reading or viewing the primary source you chose and beginning the analysis of its meaning by making notes on your answers to the questions below:Once you have begun analyzing the primary source by answering the questions above, use your answers to those questions to help determine how to interpret the primary source. Your task is not to argue with or endorse its ideas. Try to maintain an impartial tone. To complete the assignment successfully, you need to read the source carefully and analyze its contents. We will practice these analytical skills in the discussion boards, and here are some steps to follow as you put your ideas into writing this essay.Start your essay with an explanation of the task before you. Tell the reader what kind of source it is (image, legal code, literary text, travelogue, memoir, architecture, etc.). Express its stated or implied thesis or main point and try to surmise from clues in the text (tone, topics, values, etc.) the source’s purpose. Provide a historical context for the document. Your goal is to present an accurate and concise sketch that places the primary source in its historical context and gives an appropriate factual and thematic background to the specific points you will discuss in the next part of the essay.That explanation of the source and its historical context might be handled in a few concise sentences or it might require a couple of paragraphs. Either way, the bulk of the paper should center on what you take to be the main takeaway from the document. What key issue does the document raise? What kind of information does it provide? Your explanation about what we can learn from the artifact is your thesis, and your job is to demonstrate the validity of that thesis with specific references to the source.Analyze the values and assumptions the source contains. You will have to make some inferences from the source since values and assumptions are more often hidden and implicit rather than open and explicit. They are the unspoken foundations on which a source rests, and they often give it its meaning. Be sure to present those pieces of evidence upon which you make your assessment.Note that what we can learn from a document is often not what the document purports to be about. A tax record might reveal much about a given culture’s social structure. A travelogue might reveal more about the traveler’s culture than it does about the land he or she is visiting. A description of factory workers might reveal attitudes toward education or marriage or technology or gender or any number of other topics. You will have to use your interpretive skills to find meaning in documents that may be implicit rather than explicit.Be sure to give specific examples to support your claims. Express your ideas as clearly and forcefully as possible, and be sure that similar ideas are grouped together around a central issue for each paragraph. Just as each paper should center on a single main point or thesis, so should each paragraph develop a single idea or topic. Make sure that your ideas flow easily from one paragraph to another in a logical, sequential manner, and make that logic apparent by means of clear transitions.Your conclusion should pull your ideas together and flow naturally from the body of the essay. At the end of the essay, summarize your main points, underscore your thesis, explain the significance of the primary source, and leave the reader with an idea to ponder.