Primary Sources

The humanities encompass various fields: art (studio, especially art history), history, literature, music, theater & dance, and religion.

Primary sources are any material/artifacts from a period that researchers/scholars study that convey the experience from that time.

Secondary sources are scholarly treatments of a topic that utilize primary and secondary sources to explain the past or the subject. 

Tertiary sources contain both primary and secondary sources (scholarly analyses). 

The humanities share many types of the same primary sources. While the primary source depends on the topic or question one is researching. Here are many examples of primary sources.

From Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in History, Craver, Kathleen, D 16.2 .C79 1999, p.18-19

Typical tools that we use for research can provide us with primary & secondary sources: catalogs, ONESEARCH), databases (some have only secondary sources; some only primary sources & some both), & the Internet.