The Western Asian Pre-Pottery Neolithic A began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites.
The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both.
Late Aceramic Cyprus did not have much external contact because of a lack of settlement in the west or northwest during the period.
The specific term Pre-Ceramic is used for a period in many chronologies of the archaeology of the Americas, typically showing some agriculture and developed textiles but no fired pottery.
For example, in the Norte Chico civilization and other cultures of Peru, the cultivation of cotton seems to have been very important in economic and power relations, from around 3200 BC.