​***Thank you to VALERIE WHITE of Vista High School, for all her help.  All APAH content and information made possible from her hard work.  
​Also, thank you to Dr. Robert Coad for his guidance and materials.
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DATES IN ART HISTORY
​When we start out at the very beginning, prehistory, it is unwritten. There was no record keeping and no way to keeping track of time yet, time still exists. When you attach a year to an event or try to time stamp an era, we will use BCE or CE. BCE means "Before Common Era" and CE means "Common Era." You may also know these terms, respectively, the same as BC and AD. BC refers to "Before Christ" and AD refers to "Anno Domini", which means "the year of our Lord." These are Christian terms and because we are looking at the world's history not the history of Christians, it is more inclusive and correct to use the terms BCE and CE. When you're writing dates, it is imperative that you write BCE if you're referring to anything before the year 1. It is not necessary to write CE, except when you mean to be perfectly clear. This will happen often at the turn such as during the Ancient Roman era. Another example, if you mean to write 1333BCE during the Egyptian Armarna period and you leave off BCE, you're writing 1333, which is during the Renaissance. BIG difference. 

The second most confusing part of dates is centuries. For example, the year 734 is in the 8th century, the year 2016 is in the 21st century. This is because the year 1-100 is our first set of one hundred years, therefore it is the 1st century. The years 101-200 is in the 2nd century, and so on. There is no year zero. So, you can see that the years before 1 is before the common era and as we move closer to the present day, it is more towards the common era.
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​BEFORE COMMON ERA
25,000 Paleolithic
​5000    Neolithic
3000    Sumeria
2500    Old Kingdom Egypt
              Cycladic
1900     Babylon
1500     New Kingdom Egypt
              Minoan
1333      Armana Period Egypt
1250     Mycenean
900      Geometric Greek
700      Orientalizing Greek
550      Archaic
             Etruscan
539      Persia
480      Severe Greek
450      Classical Greek
350      Late Classical Greek
250      Hellenistic Greek
             Roman Republic

COMMON ERA
​250      Roman Imperial
250      Roman Late Empire
350      Early Christian
550      Byzantine
622       Beginning of Islam
600      Merovingian
800      Carolingian
1000    Ottonian
1100     Romanesque
1140      Early Gothic
1200     High Gothic
1250     Late Gothic
1300     Giotto/ Early Ren.
1450     15th c. Italian Ren.
1450     15th c. N. Euro. Ren.
1515      High Renaissance
1530     Mannerism
1550     16th c. N. Euro. Ren.
1650     Counter Ref. Baroque
             N. Bourgeois Baroque
             N. Aristocratic Baroque
1730     Rococo
1750     18th c. styles
1800    Neoclassical
1830    Romanticism
1837     Photography
1850    Realism
1874     Impressionism
1886    Post-Impressionism
1890s  Symbolism
1900   Art Nouveau
1905    Fauvism
1910     Cubism
1914      Futurism/German Exp.
1916      Dada
1925     Harlem Renaissance
1930    Constructivism/      
​             Suprematism
1930     Surrealism/ Bauhaus
1930     DeStijl
1930     Mexican Muralists
1950     Abstract Expressionism
1960     Pop Art, Happenings
1970     Earth Art
1980     Post Modernism- present