During Leg 178 of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), sediments were drilled along the continental margin of the Antarctic Peninsula (Barker, Camerlenghi, Acton, et al., 1999). The sites drilled included three sites on hemipelagic drifts on the continental rise and a number of sites on the inner and outer continental shelf. During the cruise, 71 sediment samples were taken for X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses to determine both bulk and clay mineralogy. Most of these samples (66) were silts and clays collected from the continental rise at Sites 1095, 1096, and 1101. Only five samples were from the outer continental shelf, and these represented glacial tills and glacial marine sediments from Site 1097. A subset of 52 of these sediment samples were analyzed by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to determine a suite of 12 trace elements (V, Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Ba, and Ce).
Splits of all 71 samples were retained for shore-based analyses. Major element chemistry was determined on 67 of these samples by electron microprobe analyses of fused beads. An additional suite of trace elements (Sc, Cr, Fe, Co, Zn, As, Rb, Sr, Sb, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Sm, Eu, Tb, Yb, Lu, Hf, Ta, and Th) was determined by instrumental neutron activation analyses (INAA) on 39 samples.