The Mount Pleasant Period is a phase of the later Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 in Britain

Prehistoric Britain

For the purposes of this article, Prehistoric Britain is that period of time between the first arrival of humans on the land mass now known as Great Britain and the start of recorded British history...

 dating to between c. 2750 BC and 2000 BC. It was so named by Colin Burgess in the 1970s using Mount Pleasant henge

Mount Pleasant henge

Mount Pleasant henge is a Neolithic henge enclosure in the English county of Dorset.Rather like other 'superhenge' sites such as Durrington Walls much of the earthworks have been ploughed or weathered away and it was not rediscovered until Stuart Piggott and his wife Peggy Guido visited the area in...

 as its typesite. The period is divided into three phases, the Frankford industries, the Migdale-Marnoch industries and then the Ballyvalley-Aylesford industries. During this period, Beaker pottery appears in the archaeological record and metalworking, initially using copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 and gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

 but with bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 working appearing at the end. It followed the Meldon Bridge Period

Meldon Bridge Period

The Meldon Bridge Period is the name given by archaeologists to the earliest period of metalworking and the first period of the late Neolithic in Britain. It spans the period 3000 BC to 2750 BC and is named after the typesite of Meldon Bridge in Peeblesshire. Copper was used for the first time in...

 and was superseded by the Overton Period

Overton Period

The Overton Period is the name given by archaeologists to a division of prehistory in Britain covering the period between 2000 BC and 1650 BC....

. There are parallels with the Unetice culture

Unetice culture

Unetice; or more properly Únětice culture ; is the name given to an early Bronze Age culture, preceded by the Beaker culture and followed by the Tumulus culture. It was named after finds at site in Únětice, northwest of Prague. It is focused around the Czech Republic, southern and central Germany,...

of continental Europe.