Prehistoric

I was watching on DVD an old episode of Time Team yesterday, and I heard the famous British archaeologist Carenza Rachel Lewis refer to a shard of pottery as “prehistoric.”

A couple of months ago I was out exploring an abandoned adobe church with an archaeologist friend of mine when she pointed out a small shard of “prehistoric” pottery. It was a small piece of Jornada Mogollon El Paso Brown pot.

In each case I was surprised to hear reputable archaeologists using the word “prehistoric.” It is such a vague, imprecise, and value laden word. To the layman it implies really, really super-old, which it may or may not be.

I feel more comfortable hearing the more descriptive phrases like Jornada Mogollon ceramic or El Paso Polychrome pottery. In Europe the words Paleolithic, Neolithic, bronze age, iron age, Classical Greek, Roman, and Middle Age are much more descriptive than “prehistoric.”
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