Over the last two centuries, multiple methods have been employed to study the ruins of Hampi. In 1800, Colonel Colin Mackenzie prepared the first survey map of the site. From 1856, photographers began recording the monuments, enabling scholars to study them visually. From 1836, epigraphists collected several dozen inscriptions from temples. Historians also collated information from accounts of foreign travellers and literature in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Sanskrit.

In the twentieth century, the site was preserved by the Archaeological Survey of India and the Karnataka Department of Archaeology. In 1976, Hampi was recognised as a site of national importance, and in the early 1980s, an extensive project was launched to document material remains through detailed surveys using various recording techniques.

These methods complemented the information from priests of the Virupaksha temple in significant ways. While the priests provided valuable memories and oral traditions about the site, the scientific methods offered physical evidence and written records. Inscriptions provided authentic dates and royal orders, while photographs preserved visual details of monuments. Foreign travellers' accounts offered outsider perspectives that priests might not have known. Together, these diverse sources enabled historians to reconstruct the history of the city and empire more accurately and comprehensively than oral traditions alone could provide.