Just because the boundaries are fuzzy doesn't necessarily invalidate the concept of a 'dark age'. If you don't like the term, we could call it "the age where t

Just because the boundaries are fuzzy doesn't necessarily invalidate the concept of a 'dark age'. If you don't like the term, we could call it "the age where total population, urbanization levels, manuscript production, trade volume, lead pollution, [placeholder for other convenient or inconvenient metric] in Europe[1] stayed far below peak Roman levels" - but that's kind of a mouthful... [1] 'western' Europe in particular, but some of the effects are visible at continental scale, or even globally