Week 1: Tacitus and Lex Salica

Due Jan 9 by 11:59pm
Points 100
Submitting a text entry box or a file upload
Available until Jan 18 at 11:59pm

This assignment was locked Jan 18 at 11:59pm.

Writing Assignment:

This week's writing assignment has two parts. Be sure to complete and submit both of them.

First: The first thing a historian has to do when reading a source is evaluate that source. This process is called "source criticism" and it is crucial to forming an understanding of who the author was, why they were writing, and what issues we might encounter with that source. After reading the instructions on how to read a primary source, and before you begin reading Tacitus' Germania and the Lex Salica, compose a brief source criticism "checklist" for both sources that contains the following information (you can just cut and paste the list below twice and then answer the questions for both sources):

- Who was the author?
- Why were they writing?
- Where was the text produced?
- When was the text or document written?
- What is the text about (what are its main themes)?
- What purpose(s) did the text serve?
- How does it serve the purpose for which it was written?
- Does the text have an obvious bias? What is that bias? (this will be more applicable to Tacitus' Germania than the Lex Salica)

Don't worry if you don't have clear answers yet for some of these questions. We will discuss them in sections together. Just jump into the cold water of reading primary sources and do your best.

Second: There will be a lot of information coming at you in the primary sources we read for this class, and not all of it is equally important. You need to learn to identify the parts of the text that are most important. For the first several weeks, we will be looking at Germanic society's structure and values, so you need to pay attention to things like government, religion, marriage and inheritance practices, family, kin groups, and feuds. You should also always be on the lookout for material that betrays bias. This highlighting exercise is designed to help you track these themes.

As you are reading Tacitus and the Lex Salica, highlight the following components:

yellow = material on government, including chiefs/kings and retainers

blue = material on religious structures, authorities, and practices

purple = material on the status/roles of women in Germanic society, including marriage practices

green = material on inheritance practices

orange = material on the roles of families, kin groups, and feuds

red = any material that you think betrays bias (do this for the Lex Salica as well as for Tacitus)

Bring your highlighted version of the reading with you to class in addition to submitting it online (you should download the text, highlight it, then upload it to Canvas as part of your assignment).