The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of...
• About
• Get help in the History Group

Dark Ages

Dark Ages [CP].
A term sometimes used to refer to periods immediately after the collapse of civilizations or when archaeological evidence suggests a phase of relatively little activity compared with what had been evident in previous times. Examples include the Dark Ages in Greece (c.1100–800 BC) after the Mycenaean collapse, and the British Dark Ages spanning the period AD 410–900 after the Roman collapse. The term is not very helpful, as it suggests that little is known about the period. The ‘darkness’ referred mainly to the paucity of evidence for the period, a paucity now partly remedied and more apparent than real.

Oxford University Press Titles

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
• The Oxford Dictionary of Economics
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature
• The Oxford Companion to American Military History
• The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
• The Oxford Companion to English Literature
• The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
• The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
• The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
• The Oxford Dictionary of Art
• Oxford Dictionary of Sociology
• Oxford Dictionary of World History
• Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology