Chronological frame
Scope note: This timeline centres on the Pretani, Caledonian, and wider northern Iron Age horizon. Pictish material is included only where it helps distinguish later successor or comparative evidence from the earlier Pretani subject.
- c. 800 BCE to AD 500
- ScARF's Iron Age framework uses the broad Scottish Iron Age horizon from the end of the Bronze Age to the formation of post-Roman kingdoms and the arrival of Christianity. [scarf-ritual]
- c. 4th century BCE
- Pytheas of Massalia belongs to the early Greek horizon for Britain and the far north, but his original work is lost and must be reconstructed from later authors. [strabo]
- 1st century CE
- Tacitus's Agricola is central for the Roman literary framing of Caledonia and Mons Graupius, but it is a Roman senatorial text, not native testimony. [tacitus]
- 2nd century CE
- Ptolemy's Geographia preserves key northern tribal names and place-names, with serious mapping and allocation problems. [ptolemy] [mann-breeze]
- Post-Pretani comparative horizon
- Pictish language and symbol evidence belongs outside the core Pretani timeline. It is retained only as a later northern comparative horizon for identity, language, and symbolic communication. [forsyth-pictland] [noble-symbols]
- Modern reconstruction
- Modern Pretani animist reconstruction must remain labelled as reconstruction unless supported by a named source or archaeological context.