Leg 183 of the Ocean Drilling Program in the southern Indian Ocean recovered ~465 m of sedimentary core from Holes 1138A (central Kerguelen Plateau) and 1140A (northern Kerguelen Plateau) (Fig. F1).
All material was obtained by drilling with a rotary core barrel, and the material was neither oriented with respect to geographic north nor intact. Some of the sampled sedimentary material was biscuited into 2- to 5-cm-thick, disk-shaped pieces whose azimuthal orientation was randomized by the coring process. However, a large amount of the material was recovered in long pieces in which only the azimuthal orientation was unknown and could be used to determine the magnetic inclination. As both sites are located at relatively high latitudes (Fig. F1), magnetic inclinations provide reasonable information for detecting reversals of the geomagnetic field recorded in the sediments.
Analyses of magnetic properties provided information on the nature of the remanence, the minerals responsible for stable remanence, and the relationship of these parameters to the variations in the lithology. In this paper, we examine the remanence properties and magnetic mineralogy of a suite of samples that cover a full stratigraphic range and are reasonably representative of the various lithologic types encountered in Holes 1138A and 1140A.