In historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age most commonly refers to the European Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly) 476 to 1000. This concept of a dark age was created by the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarca and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Later historians expanded the term to include not only the lack of Latin literature, but also a lack of contemporary written history and material cultural achievements in general. Popular culture has further expanded on the term as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. The rise of archaeology and other specialties in the 20th century has shed much light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its positive developments.citation needed] Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.
When modern scholarly study of the Middle Ages arose in the 19th century, the term Dark Ages was at first kept, with all its critical overtones. When the term Dark Ages is used by historians today, it is intended to be neutral, namely to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us only because of the paucity of historical records compared with later times.citation needed]