Should periodization attempt to be universal, and is that possible? Does breaking up history into periods that make sense for European or American history serve to impair understanding of African, Asian, or Precolumbian history of the Americas?

I think the problem with universal periodization is the fact that it tends to be universal Europeanization more than anything else. This isn't necessarily bad when making comparative studies or reference points, but when native periodizations already exist, for example the dynastic system in China, then it seems like a rather awful waste of time. Each historian then goes on to define what "Medieval China" actually is, and each has their own interpretation, some say it's from the end of the Han to the end of the Yuan, some say it goes from the end of the Jin to the end of the Tang. I guess it's a matter of prioritizing familiarizing the topic for reader, but at the cost of tacking on a construction on top of a construction, which has to be redefined or clarified at the beginning of each period study. My question is, is it worth it?

Does vocabulary matter? Does saying "Dark Ages" or "Medieval" color our perceptions compared to "early Middle Ages"? Does dividing history into discrete periods create a false sense of distinctiveness/separation between these eras? Should we also/instead be looking at the similarities between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? The continuity from the High Middle Ages into the Early Modern World?

If it were up to me, I'd have any broad terms utilizing any form of "early" "middle" "late" "modern" simply scrapped wholesale. These words have an implication of inevitability and progress that everything that has ever happened and will happen was all for the sake of leading up to this moment that we live in, which dehumanizes the variety of experiences and lives of the past for the sake of justifying the "current" as "modern."

One of the things we should talk about more often is the way in which (modern) periodization changes the way we catalog, label, and explian primary sources.

In my period, there's a famous text that says Britain was left to 'look after itself' in 410 by emperor Honorius, who brought the Roman legions back home to deal with a local crisis. After 410, Roman Britain quickly disappeared, to be replaced by a completely different culture (the 'Angles' and 'Saxons') by the end of the fifth century. Following these texts, historians and archaeologists usually date the end of Roman Britain to 410, and the start of Britain's early middle ages either begins immediately thereafter, or dates from the supposed landing of the Anglo-Saxons c. 450.

The archaeological evidence confirms these starting and end dates, and shows evidence for a sudden, catastrophic collapse and rupture in between them. Roman material culture disappears in the early fifth century, and there's an almost total gap of evidence until the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period about two generations later. This seems to confirm the periodization we use to divide the Roman period as ending in 410, and the middle ages starting shortly after.

Except, the gap we see in the archaeology is not entirely independent from the periodization. Roman artefacts have long been conventionally been dated as no later than the end of the Roman period (410), so any site discovered with Roman material is labeled something like, 'Roman, Nth century - 410)'. Similarly, sites with 'Anglo-Saxon' artefacts have almost always dated after 450, because it's assumed there weren't any Anglo-Saxons in England before that official arrival date. This creates a tragic loop of circular reasoning, where our belief that Roman Britain collapsed on (or shortly after) 410 prevents us from identifying any Roman sites as continuing in use after this date, and our belief that Anglo-Saxon cultures didn't overlap with Roman prevents us from recognizing any such overlaps when they do occur. Consequently, the archaeological evidence has long confirmed the assumptions that went into its creation: all Roman material disappears shortly after 410 (the latest possible date on which it was thought to be created), and Anglo-Saxon material doesn't show up until after 450 (the earliest date we think it could have appeared).

It is becoming clear that this division is inaccurate, now that radiocarbon dating has become more common. Many artefacts that were once thought to date before 410 are being found in later sites, while 'Germanic' 'Anglo-Saxon' material is increasingly being shown to date as early as the beginning of the fifth century, overlapping with the end of the Roman period. But for many years, this overlap was made invisible not only because people didn't imagine overlap might be possible, but because the act of cataloging material between these two periods prevented any sites being labeled as bridging this gap. Anyone who looked for evidence of overlap struggled to find it, because, by definition, Roman sites (before 410) could not overlap with Anglo-Saxon ones (after 450).

The picture is only right now changing (for example see this short article from 5 months ago; a PhD student I know is right now finishing a project that will close this gap, and several archaeological site reports published in the last couple of years like Wasperton and Spong Hill have identified sites that were in use on both sides of the traditional divide).

What this means it that periodization doesn't just affect how historians today evaluate the (unchanging) evidence. It also influences how we make that evidence; the dates we give to archaeological material, the dates we assign to texts, to art - that is, our understandings of periodization shape the evidence from the past as well as our understanding of it in the present. When you read that Gildas' history of Britian was written in the mid 6th century, that's largely because historians agreed that the events it described had to occur after the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period, and that means after 450. When you read that a Roman city was abandoned in the early fifth century, that's often because the pottery archaeologists found there is dated something like '300-410'.

So being critical about periodization doesn't just mean questioning our own assumptions about how time is divided up when deciding how early or late we should allow a specific research project or paper to go. It means questioning how other contemporary historians' (etc) assumptions about the division of time may have caused them to group certain sources together, and keep other sources separate, in a way that artificially, misleadingly gives the impression that these chronological divisions are real when, in fact, they are products of the way we have translated, cataloged, interpreted, and dated these sources.

I am a fan of periodization when there's an understanding that this is an invented system to allow specific conversations to be simpler, but unfortunately this is often not the case. Sometimes this is because the name of the period has taken on a more specific connotation: "colonial America" seems to be used popularly to refer to the last couple of decades before the American Revolution rather than the actual colonial period; when people say "Victorian", they often mean just the last few decades of the 19th century. Neither usage is technically wrong, but in practice statements containing these phrases are actually making a huge generalization a lot of the time.

A form of periodization that doesn't tend to come up in discussions of the concept but that frustrates me is the tendency to talk about "the 1870s", "the 1920s", and so on, which is very common in fashion history. If you clarify when you mean the early/mid/late part of a decade, that's reasonable - you're then cutting the swath of time you're referring to into 2-4 year chunks. But it's infrequent that any element of fashion changes on the turn of a decade, and that everything stays the same from 1XX0 through 1XX9. As with my first point, it's often technically correct but a generalization - yes, this dress is from the 1920s and is therefore a "1920s dress", but it's only typical of about 1924-1927. Dresses from earlier in the decade more closely resemble those from 1918-1920, and from the end of the decade, 1930-1932. Dividing dress history out into decades absolutely creates a false sense of distinctiveness.

One thing that often I've either been called out or said it myself that for me, the Early Modern Era starts in 1648 and /u/elos_ has effectively simplified my argument, religious warfare is amodern. And that does sit at the main point of how I look towards the Early Modern Era, which I see as the rise of centralized state power that works towards unifying and solidifying state power to ensure state security.

So, this comes to the problem state power is of course put together and rises during the 15th and early 16th centuries to be challenged by confessional differences that exist for both honest confessional reasons (people will believe what they believe) and political reasons (looking to get out of heel of the Holy Roman Empire or push against the rising state, such as in France).

HOWEVER, we have a very big difference between the time periods of before Westphalia and After. Politics was far more complex and less linear before Westphalia with a focus towards Church Politics while after, it becomes dominated by the political personalities of the leaders of State (Louis XIV, Catherine, Maria Theresa, Frederick II, etc). So... there is a sort of... tonal difference that I have problem with the prioritization.

I think vocabulary really does matter. It can be useful to think of how periodization can be used to serve a particular worldview or agenda. Take 'The Renaissance.' It's an ambiguous term (I mean, all periods are) but if it is used aggressively, it can be used to basically claim many of the late middle ages' accomplishments (Late Gothic Northern Art, the Printing press) on behalf of 'The Renaissance' (and thus the 'modern era' that the Renaissance supposedly marks the beginning of). Since a lot of older historiography of the Renaissance emphasizes it as a break with the past, this periodization becomes self-reinforcing - invention, innovation and discovery all belong to 'The Renaissance', so the Middle Ages (or 'Dark Ages') are a period of stagnation and ignorance. Then there is the ambiguity of using a term coined to describe an artistic/aesthetic movement for describing an entire period - it colors our understanding by filtering the entire period's history through a narrow cultural lens and subordinating other aspects of history to cultural/intellectual/artistic history.

I definitely don't think periodization should be universal especially when applied across cultures since that usually just leads to Euro-centrism.

As for vocabulary, I remember in elementary school when they shifted from using Dark Ages to Medieval my entire perspective of the period shifted. I'm not sure if at this particular level vocabulary matters quite as much, but it certainly makes a different when teaching especially K-12.

The whole point of periods is to create a false separation. There's nothing to say that Late Antiquity didn't continue up through the invention of the printing press or that the Renaissance didn't end until 1800 (those are just random examples and not anything meaningful per say). Periodization is just a tool we use to say this is a time when a significant innovation/event/way of thinking developed and altered the world in some fundamental way. So we should definitely be looking at similarities between periods because especially close to division lines it's not an abrupt change.

I guess essentially what I'm trying to say is that periodization is a useful tool but we shouldn't use it as a be all end all of how we look at history. Boundaries between periods are usually fluid (with a few exceptions) and certainly don't always hold true across cultures.