Sources and Review Boundaries

Source-link review: 3 August 2026.

This page is an evidence map for reviewing the repository, not a claim that every statement in every guide has been independently verified. It identifies authoritative starting points for the areas where an error could most affect health, safety, or technical feasibility. Sources must still be checked for the specific material, location, era, scale, and operating conditions being discussed.

A bibliography does not replace inline citations. Quantitative, historical, medical, food-safety, and engineering claims should cite the supporting source next to the claim, preserve its uncertainty and scope, and distinguish sourced facts from calculations or inference. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the repository's evidence and review rules.

Safety boundary

These guides are historical orientation, not validated operating procedures. Clinical care, vaccination or biological culture, drinking-water certification, confined-space entry, excavation and mining, pressure canning, distillation, strong acids or alkalis, explosives, toxic metals, high-temperature work, and structural or marine design require the modern controls applicable to the real site. Those may include licensed or otherwise qualified professionals, laboratory identification and analysis, calibrated instruments, engineered containment and ventilation, approved equipment, permits, monitoring, and an independent rescue plan. If those controls are unavailable, do not attempt the high-risk procedure. A historical workaround is not evidence of acceptable modern risk.

Visual references

Images under assets/images/materials/ are AI-generated material studies unless their captions say otherwise. They are included to help a reader recognize the broad sequence from feedstock to product; they are not historical evidence, material-identification tests, safety demonstrations, equipment drawings, or proof of a successful process endpoint. Each generated image must have descriptive alt text, an adjacent disclosure, and a reproducible prompt record.

Externally sourced images should be used only when their provenance adds real evidentiary value. Record the creator or institution, original page, license or public-domain basis, and any modifications beside the asset record. Do not copy an image merely because it appears in search results, and do not imply that an illustrative reconstruction documents a particular culture, place, or date. See the current pilot's image and prompt record.

Public health and water

• The WHO Guidelines for drinking-water quality, fourth edition incorporating the first, second and third addenda are the main reference for catchment-to-consumer risk management, health-based targets, treatment performance, chemical hazards, and surveillance.
• WHO Sanitation Safety Planning covers risk management for wastewater, greywater, and excreta. Fixed latrine distances and composting times are only screening rules; geology, groundwater, flooding, treatment validation, exposure pathways, and end use still matter.
• CDC emergency drinking-water guidance supports the repository's limited boiling and emergency-disinfection advice and, importantly, explains that boiling does not remove fuel, toxic chemicals, or radioactive contamination.
• WHO's cholera fact sheet and CDC's smallpox vaccine guidance are boundaries for the corresponding historical discussions. They do not authorize improvised clinical treatment, variolation, or vaccine production.

Food processing and fermentation

• The National Center for Home Food Preservation explains the research basis for safe canned foods and hosts the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. Use a current tested process for the exact food, preparation, container size, canner, pressure or temperature, time, and altitude; a generic recipe cannot substitute for that process.
• USDA FSIS provides a botulism overview and a technical guideline for fermented, salt-cured, and dried products. Salt percentage, acidity, water activity, temperature, time, and product geometry are interacting controls and need a validated schedule.
• The peer-reviewed review Methanol Mitigation during Manufacturing of Fruit Spirits and the study Reproducibility of Fruit Spirit Distillation Processes show why raw material, fermentation, equipment, and analytical control matter. Smell, taste, symptoms, flame color, or a simple “heads” cut is not a methanol safety assay.
• Koji safety applies to identified, maintained production strains, not any mold that looks similar. Peer-reviewed work on Aspergillus associated with fermented soybean starter documents identification limits, while Koji Starter and Koji World in Japan describes strain management and aflatoxin-safety evidence for commercial starters. USDA ARS also summarizes research on differentiating A. oryzae from aflatoxigenic A. flavus. Do not capture wild mold for food use without qualified identification and mycotoxin controls.

Chemistry and occupational safety

• OSHA's permit-required confined-space standard and construction confined-space overview frame wells, tanks, pits, and shafts as atmospheric, engulfment, structural, and rescue hazards. A candle or odor is not atmospheric testing.
• OSHA's lead safety overview and NIOSH's lead risk-factor guidance cover exposure monitoring, hygiene, medical surveillance, and take-home contamination. Historical familiarity does not make lead safe for food, water, distillation, pigments, glaze, or routine workshop exposure.
• OSHA's eye and face protection standard, NIOSH's silica hazard guidance, and the NIOSH nitric-acid IDLH documentation are starting points for splash, dust, fume, and acute inhalation controls. Substance-specific limits do not replace process-specific hazard analysis.

Measurement and engineering

• The NIST/SEMATECH handbook chapter on measurement process characterization covers calibration, repeatability, reproducibility, stability, and uncertainty. NIST's definition of measurement resolution is a useful reminder that finer graduations do not by themselves establish accuracy.
• NIST's history of pendulum timekeeping and the second supplies the boundary conditions missing from simplified pendulum rules, including the role of local gravity and the limits of physical realizations.
• NOAA explains diurnal, semidiurnal, and mixed tidal cycles. Local coastline, basin, depth, weather, and measured predictions matter more than a universal “two tides per day” rule.
• The USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material is the baseline for species-dependent moisture movement, strength, decay, fasteners, drying, and structural use.

Agriculture and historical interpretation

• The NRCS Conservation Crop Rotation practice standard treats rotation as a site-specific planned sequence tied to soil, erosion, nutrients, pests, and management. It is a planning framework, not a universal yield promise or a fixed rotation for every climate.
• The USDA National Agronomy Manual provides broader definitions and planning context. Current local agronomy, soil testing, crop varieties, water, disease pressure, and farmer knowledge take precedence over a generic historical example.
• Museum and heritage syntheses help constrain historical claims: Historic England's Ships and Boats: Prehistory to 1840, the Science Museum Group's Whitworth surface-plate record, and the Smithsonian's wooden printing-press overview are useful starting points. Claims about invention, priority, diffusion, or “what ancient people knew” still need sources specific to the culture, place, date, and archaeological or textual evidence at issue.

Pressure vessels, electricity, and structures

• Any pressurised or fired vessel is governed by current engineering codes, not by historical practice. The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code and the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors define design, material, welding, inspection, relief-device, and operator requirements. Historical accounts of safety valves, fusible plugs, and hydrostatic testing describe why those controls exist; they do not qualify anyone to build or fire a boiler.
• Electrical work is likewise code-governed. Consult the relevant national wiring rules and the safety guidance of a recognized body such as OSHA on electrical hazards before treating any historical description of batteries, electrolysis, or conductors as a procedure. Electrolysis of brine releases chlorine, and electrolysis of water releases a hydrogen–oxygen mixture; both require engineered ventilation and ignition control.
• Dam, weir, and impoundment failure is a life-safety matter. FEMA's dam safety resources and the Association of State Dam Safety Officials cover spillway capacity, internal erosion and piping, seepage monitoring, and emergency action planning. Any structure that impounds water and could harm people or property downstream needs qualified engineering, permitting, and inspection rather than a historical rule of thumb.
• For masonry and foundation behaviour, prefer current structural engineering guidance and conservation bodies such as Historic England's technical advice over generalized historical description, especially for anything load-bearing or occupied.

Economic and institutional history

• Claims about money, credit, taxation, state borrowing, and administration are contested scholarly interpretations, not settled technical facts. Treat named episodes — debasement effects, the cost of sovereign borrowing, tax-farming outcomes, enclosure and common rights, examination systems — as summaries of argued positions and check them against specialist economic and institutional history for the relevant polity and period.
• Estimates of pre-modern yields, transport costs, army sizes, disease-to-combat death ratios, and information speeds vary widely between sources and depend on route, season, terrain, and record survival. Use them as orders of magnitude, preserve the range, and do not treat a single figure as authoritative.
• Military-history claims about the effect of any one technology on social or political structure (the stirrup thesis is the standard example) are disputed. Prefer sources that state the evidence and the counter-argument.

Subsistence, clothing, and dental health

• Foraging, trapping, hunting, and fishing are regulated activities in most jurisdictions, with rules on devices, species, seasons, check intervals, and humane dispatch. Consult the current wildlife or fisheries authority for the place in question; nothing in this repository authorizes a harvest.
• Wild plant and fungus identification requires region-specific expertise and current references, and the dangerous cases resemble edible ones. Poison control centres and national mycological or botanical societies are the appropriate authorities. "Universal edibility tests" are not a recognized safety method.
• For foodborne illness, safe cooking and cooling, and cross-contamination, prefer current food-safety authorities such as the WHO Five Keys to Safer Food. For household air pollution from cooking fuels, see the WHO guidelines on indoor air quality: household fuel combustion.
• Nutrient requirements and deficiency diseases are clinical topics. Use current national dietary guidance and clinical references rather than historical description, and note that deficiency states need diagnosis and treatment by qualified practitioners.
• Cold injury — hypothermia, frostbite, and non-freezing cold injury — has current first-aid and clinical protocols that differ from historical practice, particularly on rewarming. Follow present-day emergency guidance.
• Oral health claims should follow current dental public-health sources on plaque control and the role of sugar-exposure frequency; extraction and infection management are clinical procedures requiring trained practitioners.
• Concentrated plant extracts are not benign because they are natural. For essential oils in particular, consult current toxicology and poison-control guidance on ingestion, dermal sensitization, and phototoxicity rather than historical or contemporary herbal claims, and note that paediatric poisoning from essential oils is a recognized clinical problem.
• Fixed engines, weirs, nets, minimum mesh sizes, closed seasons, and licensing are governed by fisheries law that varies by water body and jurisdiction. Obstructing or modifying a watercourse typically requires consent regardless of fishing intent. Consult the relevant fisheries and environment authority.
• Horticultural detail is strongly regional: rootstock and variety choice, pollination groups, pruning by fruiting habit, isolation distances for seed saving, and local pest and disease pressure all need current regional guidance rather than a general description. Plant-health and quarantine rules restrict the movement of plants, scion wood, seed, and soil in many jurisdictions, and such movement is a well-documented route for spreading pests and pathogens.
• Fungal cultivation and identification are species-specific. Poisoning by misidentified fungi is a medical emergency and some dangerous species delay symptoms for many hours; national poison-control services and mycological societies are the appropriate authorities. Occupational exposure to fungal spores in growing environments is a recognized cause of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, and current occupational-health guidance applies.

This map should evolve as guide-level citations improve. When a current standard, regulator, or qualified local professional conflicts with a historical description in this repository, follow the current validated requirement.

Coverage gap, stated plainly: the guides added most recently — land transport, money and finance, statecraft, communication, electricity, steam, structures, fortification and logistics, dairy, grain, clothing and sewing, hunting and wild food, cooking and nutrition, extracts and by-products, horticulture and propagation, and mushroom cultivation, along with the fire-starting, dental, and fish-trap sections added to existing guides — carry the sections and safety framing this repository requires, but they do not yet have inline citations next to their quantitative and safety-consequential claims, as CONTRIBUTING.md requires. Treat their figures as unverified orientation until that pass is done.