During Leg 180 (June-August 1998), a nearly north-south transect of six sites (1116, 1114, 1108, 1118, 1109, and 1115) was drilled with good recovery in the sedimentary sequence of the Woodlark Basin, from the rifted footwall, as exposed on Moresby Seamount, across the western rift basin, and on to the downflexed northern margin of the basin (Figs. F1, F2, F3). The objective of this paper is to utilize the modal analyses of the sandstones from the Woodlark Basin to infer sediment provenance. The results complement information on sediment composition and provenance obtained by shipboard observations (Taylor, Huchon, Klaus, et al., 1999; Robertson et al., 2001), a chemical and mineralogical study of mainly fine-grained argillaceous sediments from the Woodlark Basin (Robertson and Sharp, this volume), petrographic investigations of volcaniclastic sediments from the Woodlark Basin (Cortesogno et al., this volume), and a study of tephra layers and volcaniclastic deposits of the Woodark Basin (Lackschewitz et al., 2001).