Common Misconceptions About Site Evidence

Misconception 1: "What you see at a site is what it originally looked like"

Most historical sites have been altered, repaired, restored, extended, or partially demolished. Victorian restoration often changed buildings significantly. Stone castles replaced wooden structures. Churches were refurnished at the Reformation. What survives today is the product of centuries of change, not a snapshot of one original moment.

Misconception 2: "If no evidence survives, nothing happened there"

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Timber buildings leave no above-ground trace. Events on battlefields leave physical marks that can only be recovered through archaeology. The lives of ordinary people were rarely written down or built in permanent materials. Historians must actively look for evidence of what is missing — and consider why it has not survived.

Misconception 3: "The physical site is more reliable than written sources because you can see it"

Physical evidence has its own biases. It over-represents the wealthy (who built in stone) and the permanent (what was not demolished). It cannot easily tell you motivation, ownership, or dates without supporting documentary evidence. Physical evidence is a primary source like any other — valuable, but requiring critical analysis alongside other source types.

Misconception 4: "Dendrochronology and carbon dating are the same technique"

They are different. Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) uses the patterns of annual growth rings to date timber precisely, often to within a year. It only works on timber. Carbon-14 dating measures radioactive decay in organic material and gives approximate dates (within decades or centuries); it works on wood, bone, and charcoal but is far less precise than dendrochronology for relatively recent periods.