It doesn't have a few terms which seem pretty important, though. So we put those below.
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(Almost analogous to a scientist's idea of elegance and beauty.)
An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated.
In Maven this means "We're going to use this as a pattern for other projects of the same type". Kind of like a template only for a whole project structure instead of just a file.
Also see this maven link which is part of the archetype plugin's FAQ
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A goal is analagous to a task in Ant, or mostly anyway. A goal is attached to a phase, and the code itself is run by a plugin.
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Perhaps the best docs for starting out on lifecycle is Maven's lifecycle docs but if you want a definition, here is another try:
Lifecycle is a set pf "phases" such as compile, package, test, deploy that are high level groups of goals. So you can attach your "goals" to these phases and let 'er rip.
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A phase is a part of a lifecycle that goals get attached to. When you run a phase you run all the goals attached to that phase, and all the other phases before that phase, including any goals attached to them.
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