The Quaternary Period, spanning the last 2.588 million years, is the latest period within the Cenozoic Era and followed the onset of global cooling and Northern Hemisphere glaciations in the latest Pliocene. The Quaternary Period is characterized by glacial to interglacial cycles that oscillate on tens of thousands of year timescales and increase in length and amplitude toward the present. This chapter aims to introduce quaternary geochronological frameworks on multiple scales, highlighting those archives and tools that provide chronological frameworks for the integration of palaeoclimate and archaeological datasets. It considers the drivers, dating and recorders of glacial–interglacial cycles, millennial-scale climate changes of the Last Glacial Cycle, and the highly-resolved centennial- to decadal-scale variability within the Holocene Epoch. The Earth's magnetic field, known also as the geomagnetic field, varies in both intensity and in its direction through time, due to instabilities in the fluid outer crust.