Radiocarbon dates on peat from the Holocene coastal deposits in west Belgium

The objective of t his paper is to present the radiocarbon dates that came available at the occasion of the systematic mapping of the Holocene deposits in the western coastal plain of Belgium. The mapping was undertaken by means of hand- and power-driven boreholes, the latter yielding suitable and sufficient material for age determinations on peatlayers. The power-driven boreholes are not regularly spread as they only form a complement t o the hand-augerholes. Hence the radiocarbon dates do not cover the entire plain, neighter all the significant changes in processes and sea-level tendencies. Therefore the radiocarbon dates will not be treated statistically. They serve a basis for reconstruction of coastal environments in space and time, which is a first essential step to be carried out before the evaluation of sea-level index points and the construction of a time-altitude graph. The radiocarbon dates discussed in this paper are not calibrated. It never has been a common practice to calibrate radiocarbon dates in geological studies for two reasons. Geological phenomena are not always datable in the rigorous meaning of the word, because often the investigated material obtains its carbon from different reservoirs. In many cases the relation between the radiocarbon age and the real time is not so important, as long as the relative age is known. The second reason is a pure practical one. The calibration curve goes only back t o about 7200 y BC. However not calibrating the radiocarbon dates includes an error if conclusions are t o be drawn in terms of absolute time and in terms of duration . The possibility of clustering radiocarbon dates on random peat growth, due to the wiggles in the calibration curve, is to be considered (Geyh, 1980, De Jong, 1981