Many archeologists (e.g. Renfrew) use a methodological definition. "Prehistory" in that definition isn't a specific period of time, it's just what you're studyi

Many archeologists (e.g. Renfrew) use a methodological definition. "Prehistory" in that definition isn't a specific period of time, it's just what you're studying whenever you apply certain types of methods. Others (e.g. Peter Schmidt, Kehoe) argue that it's just a archaic term without any meaningful communicative value. Resolutions to this include just swapping "prehistory" for "history", or defining it arbitrarily as something like 5000 BCE. The main result of all of these is to avoid the idea that some random dude shows up for a week, never to be seen again, and using that as the date when "history" starts. European contact in most of the Americas (or Africa, Australia, etc) took centuries from initial contact to full colonialism and the word "prehistory" carries a lot of negative connotations in English. Moreover, the term "writing" itself excludes a lot of written communication systems because it's typically defined only for systems that can record the complete breadth of verbal speech. A system that only encodes a domain of human communication (e.g. tax records and religious stories like Aztec script) is not "true writing" and hence "prehistoric".