archiving older posts

Wanted to archive posts from previous years and only show this year in last posts page.
First tried a separation with categories but WP keeps showing them all on last posts page.
Then tried a plugin with an “archived” status, WP was not impressed and still showed them all.
This plugin allowed me to get the required result:
instead of last posts home page use a static page (not static posts) with this code:
[catlist year=2015 excerpt=full excerpt_strip=no date=yes dateformat="j F"]
the code mimics the normal lasts posts page, just needed to add the date
and in the archive pages just a list with the links to the posts like this:
[catlist year=2014 date=yes dateformat="j F"]
I am happy.