Archaeological period in the context of "Mesolithic"

The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BC to c. 2,000 BC). It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.

The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago, when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East and Mesopotamia, and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum ("corpus of ancient vases"; abbreviated CVA) is an international research project for documentation of ancient ceramics. Its original ideal target content: any ceramic from any ancient location during any archaeological period, proved impossible of realization and was soon restricted to specific times and periods. As the project expanded from an original six nations: England, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Italy, to include the current 28, the topic specializations of each country were left up to the commission for that country. The French commission (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), serves in an advisory position.

The terminology of any commission regarding the target content of any documentation activity must not be confused with archaeological terms. For example, the CVA Online concerns itself with ancient Greek pottery, excluding the pottery of the Bronze Age. Such a decision does not imply that the pottery of the Bronze Age is not ancient Greek, but means only that CVA Online's "ancient Greek" category does not include it.

In archaeology, an enclosure is one of the most common types of archaeological site – It is any area of land separated from surrounding land by earthworks, walls or fencing. Such a simple feature is found all over the world and during almost all archaeological periods. They may be few metres across or be large enough to encompass whole cities.

Archaeological enclosures are typically representative of recurrent patterns of human activity throughout history through landscape. The absolute definition of archaeological enclosures has been debated over time. Some suggest that at a general level, enclosure (archaeologically) could be defined as the replacement of open-fields with privately owned-fields through walls, banks, and dividers. However, this definition has been criticised, as it appears many archaeological enclosures are not enclosed by a physical boundary.