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.
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