Journal of Archaeological Science 1989,16,555-560 On the Antiquity of British Chalk Grasslands: A Response to Thomas M. B. Bush” (Received 21st February 1989, revised manuscript accepted 12 April 1989) The debate over the history and antiquity of the chalk grasslands will not be resolved until there is a suite of good palaeoecological records. Willow Garth, North Humberside, provided the first broad-based, well-dated, palaeoecological study to incorporate well- preserved pollen, plant macrofossil, coleopteran, mollusc and bryophyte evidence from a site lying on the British chalk. Unfortunately, so long as there is only a single site on which to base discussion of the paleoecological history of the Yorkshire Wolds ther are bound to be grey areas and interpretive differences. Dr Thomas (this issue) has highlighted some of these problems. The papers by Bush & Flenley (1987) and Bush (1988a) were intended as summaries of a research project, and in the interests of brevity a full assessment of pertinent literature was not attempted. Thomas’s criticism in this direction is accepted. (i) Other chalkland sites As Thomas acknowledges, the sites in the Ouse valley (Thorley, 197 1,198 1) suffered from an unknown, but probably substantial, pollen component derived from non-chalkland sites, making it impossible to resolve whether vegetational changes reflected in the pollen diagram were related to the chalk or to other habitats. Any site which is peripheral to the chalk is likely to have had a wall of screening vegetation (trees) which would trap pollen blowing off the chalklands (sensu Tauber, 1977). Waton (1982a), states that if the criteria of Jacobson & Bradshaw (1981) are applied to the Rimsmoor site, less than 10% of the pollen input would have been derived from the chalkland. Winchester (Waton, 1982a,b) appears, from its location, to have been a more promising site, however the interpretation of this site relies on a single 14Cdate and has no macrofossil record. This is a site which may well yield further information if analysed in greater detail. There are no sites from the Yorkshire Wolds, except Willow Garth, covering the Devensian/Flandrian (Pleistocene/ Holocene) transition and early Flandrian (Bush & Flenley, 1987; Bush, 1988a,b). (ii) The pollen catchment The application of the techniques advocated by Jacobson & Bradshaw (1981) or, better still, the model proposed by Prentice (1985), to determine the spatial origin of the aerial ‘Department of Zoology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, U.S.A. 030%4403/89/050555 +06 $03.00/O 0 1989 Academic Press Limited