The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (English: ; from Greek: χαλκός khalkós, "copper" and λίθος líthos, "stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin aeneus "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regular human manipulation of copper, but prior to the discovery of bronze alloys. Modern researchers consider the period as a subset of the broader Neolithic, but earlier scholars defined it as a transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.

The archaeological site of Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, has the world's oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature, from c. 5000 BC (7000 BP). The transition from Copper Age to Bronze Age in Europe occurred between the late 5th and the late 3rd millennia BC. In the Ancient Near East the Copper Age covered about the same period, beginning in the late 5th millennium BC and lasting for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age.