My table keeps being placed before other figures/floats, how to I keep them in the correct order?

For some reason my table always follows text, are tables not floats? I would like my floats to appear in the order they were defined.

    \documentclass[11pt]{amsart}
\usepackage{geometry}                % See geometry.pdf to learn the layout options. There are lots.
\geometry{letterpaper}                   % ... or a4paper or a5paper or ...
%\geometry{landscape}                % Activate for for rotated page geometry
%\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}    % Activate to begin paragraphs with an empty line rather than an indent
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{convert #1 dirname #1/basename #1 .tif.png}

\title{Brief Article}
\author{The Author}
%\date{}                                           % Activate to display a given date or no date

\begin{document}
\maketitle
%\section{}
%\subsection{}
Panel c, which has a gate on the 618 keV transition, shows cleanly the decay path labeled as Band 1 of the level-scheme illustrated in figure \ref{w162_levels}, in panel b, gating on the 450 keV $2^+ \rightarrow 0^+$ transition, this band still dominates the spectrum, but it is clear that there are other linking structures. Band 2 was confirmed by gating on the 535 keV transition, which appears to decay into Band 1 via the 296 keV transition.

\begin{figure}[htb]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{147ang.eps}
\caption{a,b,c,d}
\label{w162spec}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}[htb]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ang.eps}
\caption{Level Scheme deduced for , transition energies are given in keV and relative intensities are represented by arrow widths.}
\label{w162_levels}
\end{figure}

\begin{table}[htb]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ccccc}
\hline\hline
$E_\gamma$ (keV) & $I_\gamma$ &  $A_2$&$A_4$ & Multipolarity \\

\hline

99.4 & 3.7 & &&(E2)\\
%144.5 & \multirow{2}{*}[1pt]{$\left.\rule{0cm}{0.35cm}\right\}$ 29.2} & -0.48& 0.60 * &M1/E1? \\
143.5 & 3.8 & -0.48& 0.60 * &M1/E1? \\
146.8& 24.6  & -0.33,&-0.09 *& M1  \\
167.5 & 7.0 & &&(E2)\\
179.3 & 83.7& -0.18& 0.09 &M1/E1?\\
229.6 & 12.3& -0.44&1.02 &M1/E1?\\
480.8 & 14.4& 0.30& 0.18 & E2 \\
489.2 & 35.6 & 0.31& 0.20 & E2 \\
544.2 & 97.9 & 0.17&-0.01& E2 \\
557.7 & 66.8 & 0.20& 0.07& E2 \\
569.7 & 36.6 & 0.19&-0.11& E2 \\
589.2 & 49.9 & 0.18& -0.35 &  E2 \\
597.8& 100.0 & 0.17& -0.09 & E2 \\
\hline\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{* is unresolved doublets}
\label{tab}
\end{table}

\end{document}


I hope this working example displays my problem I can't place my pictures because they're .eps format, but I think it should be the same with any.

• your figures and table appear in document in the same order as they are inserted in text. what is the problem? – Zarko Dec 4 '17 at 12:27
• When I compile it the table appears before the figures, below it has been suggested that the figures are too large. – sgehig Dec 4 '17 at 13:32
• the only difference between the figure and table environment is that figures are kept in order and tables are kept in order so if you want all images and all tables to be in the same sequence put them all in figure environments and do not use table. – David Carlisle Dec 4 '17 at 19:44
• To put a table in a figure environment you should use \captionof {table}{...} (caption package). – John Kormylo Dec 4 '17 at 23:26

For your case, you figures are flushed to the end of document because 1. The figures are too big (\textwidth); 2. (And/Or) There is not enough text to nicely fill a page.
However, you are using amsart` documentclass. If you are submitting to AMS journals, according to their instruction, don't force placement of floats!