High coercivity remanence in baked clay materials used in archeomagnetism

A study of the high coercivity remanence in archeological baked clays has been carried out. More than 150 specimens from 46 sites across Europe have been analyzed, selected on the basis of the presence of a fraction of their natural remanence that was resistant to alternating field demagnetization to 100 mT. The study was based on the stability of isothermal remanence to alternating field and thermal demagnetization and its variation on cooling to liquid nitrogen temperature. Results indicate that the high coercivity remanence may be carried by magnetite, hematite, and in isolated cases partially oxidized magnetite and goethite. In addition, a high coercivity, thermally stable, low unblocking temperature phase has been identified. The unblocking temperatures of both the isothermal remanence and the alternating field resistant natural remanence exhibit similar unblocking temperatures, suggesting that the same phases carry both signals. The high coercivity, low unblocking temperature phase contributes to the natural remanence, sometimes carrying a stable direction and behaving ideally during palaeointensity experiments and sometimes not. An unambiguous mineralogical identification of this phase is lacking, although likely candidates include hemoilmentite, related to clay source lithology, and substituted hematite or magnetic ferri-cristabolite, both possible products of thermal transformation of iron-bearing clays.