Collingwood's Detective Image of the Historian and the Study of Hadrian's Wall

Abstract

A generally casual likening of historical research to detective work is a recurrent note in historians' reflections on their discipline. This analogy is understandable. The historian has been traditionally concerned, like the detective, to reconstruct past actions on the part of identified or identifiable persons. To that end, historian and detective resort to the same kinds of basic evidence -testimony describing past actions or circumstances; non-testimonial verbal matter such as agreements, instructions, and statements of preference or intent; and artifacts or other nonverbal physical effects of human action. Both historian and detective have seen a need to be satisfied as to the credibility of received testimony and the genuineness of whatever evidence they consider. These correspondences are readily apparent, but a further point of similarity, the employment of circumstantial evidence, has received little reflective attention from historians. The familiar image of the historian as detective leads one to ask, therefore, whether this well established ingredient of criminal investigation fulfills a like function in the historian's recovery of the past. The concept of circumstantial evidence has been fashioned not so much by the practice of criminal investigation as by the subsequent proceedings of courts of law. Here circumstantial evidence is understood to be evidence of facts, or circumstances, from which one may infer the existence or nonexistence of a fact in issue, such as a defendant's alleged theft of goods.1 Because of its inferential connection with the fact in issue the main point of contention in a trial it is also called indirect evidence. Herein it is distinguished from testimony about the fact in issue, or direct evidence; if accepted as true, such testimony yields a conclusion about the fact in issue directly rather than by virtue of inference. This common distinction, however, neglects certain complications. Testimony can also function as circumstantial evidence by directly establishing a fact or circumstance that bears inferentially upon the fact in issue. As for non-testimonial evidence, a contractual document, for example, will manifestly disclose the terms of a past act of agreement and a footprint may be immediately seen to match a particular shoe. In many cases, however, non-testimonial evidence, especially