The paper is focused on the palaeographic development of the western part of the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland, during the maximum extent of the Sanian 2 (MIS 12) ice sheet and its retreat. The studies were based on archival cartographic data, coupled with new lithological and petrographic analyses of limni- and fluvioglacial sands, i.e., grain-size composition, quartz grain morphology and heavy mineral analysis, as well as analysis of the erratic material of tills. The results confirm the regional variability of the erratic material in the Sanian 2 tills and point to the long-term development of fluvioglacial sands cover documenting cold climate conditions. They also evidence that the western part of the Holy Cross Mountains was the area where two oppositely directed ice sheet lobes (Radoszyce and Sandomierz) advanced during the Sanian 2 Glaciation and that deglaciation of the area took place in two stages. Huge quantities of meltwater released at that time contributed to the intensification of earlier initiated karst phenomena, as well as filling of the existing caves by fluvioglacial sands.

In the glacial deposits of the Polish Lowland, there are erratic boulders drifted with the last continental ice sheet. Their outcrops are situated in the Baltic Shield area as well as south of it, in the bottom of the central and southern Baltic Sea. Indicator erratics, statistical erratics and the others can be distinguished in coarse-gravels associations. The studies on identification of the indicator erratics are designed for specification of the Scandinavian and Baltic alimentation centres of glacial tills of different age and their fluvioglacial counterparts; they are also aimed at determining the direction of the distant transport as well as the ice-sheet and its streams' transgression routes to the deposition places. Effectiveness of the analysis depends to a large extent on the correct classification of erratics, and this ability happens in turn to be burdened with a subjective evaluation of the clearly visible features of an erratic. In the present paper, an attention is paid to advantages and disadvantages of the analysis on the indicator boulders of the glacial deposits.

Observations of the surface of the Petuniabukta tidal flat showed the occurrence of dead forms indicating a relative lowering of the sea level. Under the silt deposits of the tidal flat a gravel-clay series was found to occur. Connecting this series with the glacial till covering the lowest marine terrace and with the erosion pavement in the lowest part of the outwaśh plain gave rise to the hypothesis that there might be a record of glacier oscillation. By dating a sample taken from the gravel series substrate, the age of the oscillation was estimated at less than 6370+/- 120 years BP.