Presenting the Art and the Science of Qualified Historiography: Anchoring History-writing in the Event of Uncertainty and Unreliability of Narratives

This paper presents and articulates the art and the science of Qualified Historiography, that is, History-writing in cases of uncertainty and unreliability of the narrative– where narratives are not absolute or certain, based on hypotheses, need to be refined and recast, and therefore also need to be qualified. This is a practical and immeasurably useful approach that allows readers to sift the grain from the chaff, and cull the essence without jettisoning the meat.  It can be used in many different cases, for example, when research is still underway, when data is incomplete, when it is intended to be used by one or more researchers as a platform for other researchers to contribute to nascent and budding ideas, when it brings some value to the table and adds to knowledge in some way and when a hypothesis is proposed to be presented to elicit feedback from a broader audience. This approach forms an integral part of twenty-first century historiography and is meant to be understood along with the trilogy of papers encompassing core twenty-first century historiography, namely Historiography by objectives, the core principles of twenty-first century historiography, and Anthropological historiography, which have already been published by us in various peer-reviewed journals. This approach is therefore complementary and supplementary to the aforesaid papers, and takes the principles presented therein to their logical conclusion.