Archaeomagnetic Studies at Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences: History and Main Results

Abstract

The archaeomagnetic studies conducted at the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPE RAS) have made a significant contribution to the international studies of the main magnetic field of the Earth for the past few thousand years. These studies have yielded extensive data on the intensity of the geomagnetic field in the past 8000 years. Four of the most representative and long time series of the data have been constructed for Eurasia: for the Iberian Peninsula, the Caucasus, Middle Asia, and Siberia. Unique studies of rapid variations of the geomagnetic field intensity (with the characteristic times starting from several tens of years) have been carried out which have no analogues in international research. The analysis of the international data on the ancient geomagnetic field made it possible to obtain a spectrum of the variations of the geomagnetic field intensity in the range from decades to millennia and to determine the characteristics of the variations whose superposition can describe the pattern of the changes of the geomagnetic field intensity. It was established that variations with different characteristic times have differently directed the drift and the “main oscillation” (with a characteristic time of 8000 years) has an eastern drift.