This assessment reveals students' ability to source a document. Historical documents do not provide perfect windows into the past. Rather, each source has relative strengths and weaknesses as evidence about the past. This HAT gauges whether students can see not only how a document provides evidence about the past but also its limitations.
Students with a sophisticated understanding of historical evidence will be able to explain how a photograph of former slave quarters provides some evidence of the living conditions of enslaved people. They will also observe how the fact that the photograph was taken decades after the abolition of slavery limits its usefulness as evidence of antebellum living conditions.
