The schema describes a single period concept as a single document (in the sequence called “period definition document”) that may link to other period definition documents and auxiliary concepts, such as bi bliography or gazetteer entries. A period thesaurus is built from a set of consistently linked period definitions.

The schema comprises multilingual terminology for the period, the period definition in the narrower sense, its analytical spatiotemporal extent and spatiotemporal relationships, characteristic attributes and cultural influences, metadata about the initial conception of the period and the document that first defines it (the definition document)