Propositioning Investigative Historiography as a Niche Subfield within Twenty-First Century Historiography: Making a Case for Investigative Historiography in Twenty-First Century Social Sciences

This is our fifth paper on twenty-first century historiography. In the first paper, which was published by us in the year 2015, we had defined and set forth the core objectives of what we called twenty-first century historiography. In the second paper published by us in 2016, we had postulated the core principles of twentyfirst century historiography. In the third paper published by us in 2018, we had had introduced the concept of Anthropological Historiography wherein we had sought to integrate history with pre-history and proto-history much better. In the fourth paper on qualified historiography published by us in 2022, we had tried to explain how historiography could be dealt with in the case of the unreliability and uncertainty of narratives. In the present paper, we put forward a case for investigative historiography which can be developed as a niche area well within mainstream twenty-first century historiography. The objective of this niche subfield would be to lay bare the tools, techniques and the scientific methods that could be employed and put to use in carrying out historical investigations. Some of these tools and techniques may already exist and may already be in use, but we put forward new approaches keeping in mind the overall philosophy of twenty-first century historiography. Of course, the outputs of investigative historiography would provide crucial inputs into mainstream twenty-first century historiography, and investigative historiography would be an essential cog in the wheel of historical and scientific research