History and its auxiliary sciences

Historians rarely work alone: they borrow methods from auxiliary sciences that help date, read and interpret evidence the written record cannot supply. Archaeology recovers material remains, epigraphy reads inscriptions, numismatics studies coins, and palaeography decodes scripts, while geography, chronology and statistics frame where and when events happened. A concrete example is the decipherment of the Brahmi script, which unlocked Ashokan edicts and transformed the study of ancient India from legend into documented history. This chapter maps these helpers and their limits.