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 twentyfirst 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.