Prosopography: An Approach to Studying Elites and Social Groups

Abstract

This study presents prosopography, or collective bibliography, as an auxiliary approach to historical study. Prosopography focuses on researching the common characteristics of historical actors belonging to a specific group, as well as studying their external characteristics, similar and different, and the trajectories of their lives, gathering data from phenomena touching any individual’s life to common aspects of the lives of these individuals. Social historians have adopted prosopography, an approach once geared to the study of ancient history, to studying social groups in eras of medieval, modern, and contemporary history. This has resulted in the emergence of new findings that are distinct from those derived from other studies, especially when data are scarce and written sources are unavailable, or the archive is sparse or missing.