During Leg 180 (June-August 1998), a nearly north-south transect of six holes, with good recovery, was drilled across the Woodlark Basin, from the footwall (represented by the Moresby Seamount, across the western Woodlark rift basin) to the downflexed northern margin of the rift (Figs. F1, F2). The objective here is to utilize chemical and mineralogical evidence of mainly hemipelagic sediments from the Woodlark Basin to infer sediment provenance. The results supplement information on sediment composition and provenance obtained by shipboard observations (Taylor, Huchon, Klaus, et al., 1999) and a study of thin sections of the coarser grained silts/siltstones and sand/sandstone from the Woodlark Basin (see Sharp and Robertson, this volume; see Cortesogno et al., this volume). Fine-grained sediments (clays, muds, and silts) are estimated to account for >80% of the total sediment volume recovered in the Woodlark Basin and thus are important for understanding depositional processes and sediment provenance within the basin as a whole.