Evidence 85the end of the twentieth century. As a result, architectural
historians might now begin with a building as easily as they
might end with one or evade building altogether. ‘How’ or
‘when’ might now be asked of a document or subject that
would have been inconceivable as an architectural historian’s
subject in 1960, 1970 or even 1980.
Given these observations, we might think of the way that
historical evidence bears upon conceptual questions and
issues of signifi cance according to three fl uid and overlapping
categories of evidence: procedural, contextual and concep-
tual. Procedural evidence leads us to the facts of any given
subject: how things came to be from start to fi nish, and who
was involved at each step of the way. The question of person-
nel pertains also to contextual evidence, which places the
historical subject in its broader settings. Proof of timing,
sequence, location, as well as of the fi gures involved and their
relation to other fi gures – when, where and who – helps
historians to place their subject in relation to other subjects
and, ultimately, to the wider web of narrative accounts of
the historical past against which all historians of architecture
measure their work and have it assessed by others. A third
category, conceptual evidence, concerns the kind of material
that forces the question of a subject’s qualifi cation. It will
often be impossible or undesirable to place a document,
building or print into one categorical box or another. The
disciplinary qualifi cations of an architectural history demand,
however, a position (even implicit) on how a non-canonical
or marginal subject has signifi cance for the wider discipline
- and therefore a place in what has variously been called
the discourse or conversation of architectural history. The
deployment of evidence in pursuit of historiographical ques-
tions or historical acuity consequently raises conceptual
issues alongside those of procedure and context.
Evidence and the architectural historian’s practice
A series of examples allows us to see how these points may
operate in practice. Specialists in the history of architectural
artefacts, design-and-construction documents, and represen-
tations of architecture, be they anticipatory, documentary or