Method

What this place is

The Archive is a digital museum built around evidence. Every page is curated as a gallery centred on a principal exhibit, whether that exhibit is a surviving document, artefact, archaeological object, or, where appropriate, an artefact of later legend. Interpretation exists to help visitors understand the objects, not replace them. Every exhibit, like every historical claim, is subject to the Archive's evidence standards, confidence framework, and source transparency. Where little survives, the absence of evidence is itself honestly exhibited rather than concealed.

Evidence

Every material claim on this site has a row in an evidence register: the claim, its source, its confidence and the pages it affects. Claims are sourced to named kinds of document wherever possible, a commission, a deposition, a letter, a trial record, rather than to "the records" in the abstract. Where a reference is still being verified, the page says "reference to be added" instead of inventing one.

Uncertainty

The Archives uses five confidence levels: Confirmed, Highly Probable, Probable, Possible and Speculative. A claim is never written more confidently than its level. When you read "the surviving record indicates" rather than a plain statement, that wording is deliberate, and it will firm up or soften as verification proceeds. Interpretation is presented as interpretation, with the reasoning shown.

The confidence convention

On the pages themselves, an unmarked statement is Confirmed. Any statement less certain than that carries its level beside it: Highly Probable, Probable, Possible or Speculative. The full evidence trail behind every claim is maintained in the Archive's registers, and errors are acknowledged on the corrections page.

Reconstruction

Authentic historical material is preferred wherever rights and quality permit. Generated or interpretive imagery is used only when it teaches something prose or a source image cannot, and it is labelled near the image: Historical reconstruction, Interpretive reconstruction, or Interpretive route map. A reconstruction is never evidence, and the Archives will not place convincing invented text on an image of a historical document.

Revision

Pages change as research completes. Errors, once found, are corrected and acknowledged on the corrections page. Nothing is final because the record is not final.