Sorry Neil, I did follow your point. As you say, Early Modern is a perfectly
accepted historical term, which I have sometimes heard used interchangeably
with "Renaissance", and is an alternate term for part of the more general
period called "Post Medieval" (which, incidentally, I also dislike). As for
your subsequent terms, Eric Hobsbawm's sweeping "modern" histories were
entitled "The Age of Enlightenment", "The Age of Industry", etc, but I don't
recall all of his "Age" titles, nor the date ranges they related to.
I hoped I was asking a leading question about use of sequential terms
(early, middle, late, post) in archaeology. In the Wallerstein schema and
elsewhere they do not necessarily follow each other directly (or at all).
Should they?
I do think we should be considering what we call periods from 1850 onwards.
Historians may take a longer view, but we are dealing with this material
now. We may end up being wrong, but if we agree at least we will all be
wrong together.
To my mind, the "Decline of Britain" is faintly ridiculous, especially for
the period 1850-1914. Any other suggestions?
I like the use of the "Nuclear Age" for post 1950 (or post 1945 - Manhattan
Project, Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but that still leaves us with a gap.
Duncan
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