Whether you are entering an A&S project in a competition or are trying to make your work more authentic, you will be looking for a variety of sources to find the information you need. Sources used for research are divided into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary. A source's category identifies how far removed it is from the actual artifact or time period.
A primary source is an actual artifact, or photograph of that artifact, from the time period you are studying. While it can be nice to study an artifact in person, this is usually not possible. Many people don't realize that photographs of artifacts can sometimes be even more helpful than the object itself. Archeologists generally photograph each item they find, from all different angles, even before it is removed from the ground. This ensures a record of the object if it is damaged during or after the excavation. Lighting and shadow can also be used in photographs to make more visible features of the object that are difficult to see with the unaided human eye. High resolution photographs also encourage enlarging as it is possible to zoom in quite a bit to see tiny details that might otherwise be overlooked.
Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes. The most obvious of these are items that were made and used by people in the past. These can include things like houses, furniture, clothing, and everyday household objects as well as the tools, machines, and natural resources used to create these items. Paintings, sculptures, jewelry, letters, books as well as other creative objects and writings are also included in this category. More mundane items such as business records, merchant logs, religious and government records, contracts, censuses, and birth and death records can provide very unique and specific information. Finally the remains of the people themselves and the plants and animals that surrounded them can yield a wealth of information about a society.
One primary resource that often goes unidentified and overlooked is experimental archeology. Experimental archeology is a method of educated trial and error used by archeologist to determine how the objects they find were used and how a society functioned. Experimental archeology is also used by most people in the SCA when working on, not only A&S projects, but also when trying to recreate their persona. When you try several times to work out proportions for ingredients in a recipe, or try again and again to get just the right color of dye, you are doing experimental archeology. This experimentation is vital to most research and all of it should be documented including mistakes, mishaps, and unexpected results. Your experimentation helps not only you, but others who will be researching similar topics in the future.