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.