Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) cores permit us to extend the study of millennial-scale climate variability beyond the time period that is generally accessible for piston cores. ODP Leg 177 provided for the first time continuous high sedimentation rate cores along a north-south transect from 41 degrees to 53 degrees S across the main subdivisions of the Southern Ocean. The main purpose of this drilling was to investigate the Pleistocene and Holocene paleoceanographic history of this region, documented in the sedimentary records. ODP Sites 1094, 1093, 1091, and 1089 accumulated throughout the Pleistocene at rates >10 cm/k.y. and are the most detailed Pleistocene climatic records ever retrieved from the Southern Ocean. These sections provide a unique opportunity to fill an important gap in the knowledge of the paleoclimatic evolution of the high southern latitude regions. The composite sections at each site were generated shipboard using magnetic susceptibility, gamma ray attenuation (GRA) density, and reflectance data to correlate the drill holes and splice together an optimal (complete and undisturbed) record of the sedimentary sequence at each site. A preliminary magnetic polarity stratigraphy was generated on the "archive" halves of the core sections from each hole, using the shipboard pass-through magnetometer after demagnetization at a single peak alternating field.