A lacustrine record of paleomagnetic secular variations from Birkat Ram, Golan Heights (Israel) for the last 4400 years

Abstract Detailed paleo- and rock magnetism investigations were carried out on three sediment cores from Birkat Ram, Golan Heights (Israel). Based on high-resolution logs of magnetic susceptibility a 5.4 m long composite profile was created that spans the last 4400 years. The time interval covered by a single sample is about 26 years. Characteristic remanent magnetisation (ChRM) of all 288 samples was determined by analysis of the results of progressive alternating field (AF)-demagnetisation. The brown to olive coloured homogenous sediments show a fairly stable magnetisation and the obtained inclination and declination records agree with the archaeomagnetic records from Iraq, Egypt and Israel. Comparison of the PSV records from Birkat Ram with those from Bulgaria and Hungary yielded a different behaviour of the Earth’s magnetic field vector over the Near East and southeast Europe during the last 1000 years.