Why does the Dark Ages label persist?

Is the period called the Dark Ages mainly because fewer contemporary accounts survive?

That is a familiar explanation, but the response places more weight on good scholarship about the period receiving too little attention.

The suggested explanation is that fewer contemporary accounts have survived. That explanation is acknowledged as a familiar perspective, but the response places more weight on the reception of historical scholarship. Good work on the period has been published without receiving enough attention. This is a judgment about how the period is studied and represented, rather than a count of surviving sources.