FRAGMENTS OF POTTERY.

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M. Ed. Dupont has collected fragments from all the Belgian stations, which he has examined with the greatest care. M. Roujou discovered rough-hewn flints and some almost shapeless pottery in the yellow sediment of the Seine, near Choisy-le-Roi, a deposit which he believes to be anterior to the age of polished stone ('Congress of Bologna,' 1871, p. 83). Very rude earthenware has also been found in the cave of Hohefels, near Ulm, with a quantity of bones of the reindeer, bear, and mammoth. Lastly, the Abbé Spano considers that the fragments of pottery which he found in the neighbourhood of the most ancient Nuraghi, belong to the archæolithic age. (See p. 127.) But doubts have been thrown upon the contemporaneity of some of these keramic productions with the bones of extinct animals in the midst of which they were discovered.1 Pottery becomes somewhat less rare in the reindeer age; it is common in the neolithic period.

M.M. Cartailhac and de Fondouce have even asserted that all the pottery found in the caves and in a number of dolmens belongs exclusively to the age of polished stone. They make no exception in favour of the curious fragments found in the cave of Nabrigas, of whose great age MM. Ed. Lartet and Christy had so little doubt that the latter had casts made of them for the English museums.2 M. de Quatrefages agrees with us in rejecting the opinion of MM. Cartailhac and

1 Among others by MM. de Mortillet and Cartailhac, who do not believe that pottery existed in the paleolithic age. M. Hamy is a partisan of the contrary opinion, which we are also inclined to share. Lastly, M. Flouest found in the camp of Chassey, in the department of Saône-et-Loire, a fragment of rude pottery, of which the inner lining, black in colour and almost friable, contains particles of silica which serve to bind it. The author of this discovery thinks he has reason to attribute this pottery to the earliest stone age.

2 A specimen of this casting has been placed in the Natural History Museum of Toulouse. The original, in my possession, forms the bottom of a flat-bottomed vessel, irregularly circular, evidently hand-made, as the print of the fingers which moulded the clay and ornamented the outer surfaces with deep parallel furrows, is clearly distinguishable both outside and in. This fragment was found in an ossiferous sediment containing a quantity of bones of the Ursus spelaus.

de Fondouce, especially with regard to the prehistoric pottery of Belgium, notably that of the trou du frontal. It would,' he says, 'be placing the age of polished stone far too early to attribute it to an epoch when the chamois, the wild goat, and the saïga antelope lived in Belgium

FIGS. 136, 137, 138, 139. PIECES OF POTTERY FOUND IN THE BARROW OF WEST KENNET. (After Lubbock.)

with the Norway rat and the ptarmigan. This is perhaps a subject for consideration; but the presence of these species in the neighbourhood of Dinant is to us a proof that we are still in the fourth epoch' (De Quatrefages' "L'Espèce Humaine,' p. 253, Paris, 1877).

ORNAMENTATION OF POTTERY.

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The most ancient vessels, nearly always reduced to mere fragments, and even those of a more recent epoch, are made of coarse clay mixed with sand, with carbonate of lime, quartz, or mica,' imperfectly baked with fire or sun-dried, but not thrown on the wheel, an invention of comparatively recent date. Yet these vases are often elegant in shape, of which the reader may readily assure himself by glancing at the vessels discovered more or less intact in certain tumuli, and in the earliest lake dwellings of Switzerland and Italy. (See above, figs. 52 and 53.)

They are ornamented in the simplest and most uniform way, with designs in relief or depressions made with the nail or the top of the finger, with pieces of wood, pointed bones, or string pressed more or less deeply into the soft clay. On the more recent vessels these are in the form of straight or zigzag lines, dots, or parallel lines, squares, triangles, or rarely circles (figs. 136, 137, 138, 139). These combinations recall to mind the figures carved or engraved by the modern Kabyles on the blade or wooden sheath of their yataghans. Ornaments of twisted clay applied with the hand, occasionally handles, and sometimes, near the brim, knobs pierced with holes for the passage of a suspending string, never a spout; such are the distinguishing features of the pottery of prehistoric

time.

Neither plants nor animals are ever represented on any of the vessels found in France, to whatever epoch they may belong. This absence of ornament is one of the characteristics of primitive pottery. Yet from the reindeer age that is to say, the epoch of the dawn of keramic art-the arts of design were already sufficiently

1 MM. G. de Mortillet and Ed. Dupont assert that the pottery of the neolithic age only contains carbonate of lime mixed with the clay; while in those of the archæolithic age sand, mica, and carbonate of lime are all found. I do not know that large pieces of mica have hitherto been found in European pottery, as in American earthenware of the epoch of the mound builders.

2 The stem and veins of a leaf are figured upon a vase found at Wangen, in Switzerland.

developed; we see the proof in the drawings and carvings executed on bone, ivory, and stone by the artists of Languedoc and Périgord. This presents a new problem to be resolved; unfortunately all the elements necessary to its solution are not yet forthcoming.

It is worthy of note that the instinct of imitation, so little developed among the primitive European potters, is on the contrary very strong among the various peoples of the New World. Their earliest vessels are a more or less faithful reproduction of the form of the fruits (that of the gourd is of most common occurrence), and of the animals of the country (see p. 165). The modern pottery of certain American tribes has retained the same character in spite of contact with Europeans.

A great similarity is observed in the pottery of the archæolithic and neolithic ages. This likeness is sometimes so great as to occasion a real difficulty in deciding to which epoch any given vessel should be attributed. Hence the numerous errors which have been made on this point, and which are still of daily occurrence. It cannot be denied, however, that vases with a curved bottom are more ancient than flat-bottomed ones. The latter mark a real progress in keramic art. Others, still more recent, terminate in a point, and require, in order to maintain an upright position, a clay ring or support which is frequently found with them. But this conical form is proper to the age of bronze, and therefore does not concern us here.

The potter's wheel, known in China from all time, is clearly represented on the wall paintings of Thebes and on the walls of the tomb of Beni-Assan, of which the date is nineteen or twenty centuries before Christ. But it was only generally employed in Europe at a much later date.

An observation which applies to almost all the products of primitive industry has been made upon the subject of pottery; it is that the vessels resemble each other the more closely among all peoples in proportion as the degree of civilisation attained has been less advanced. They differ, on the other hand, more and more widely in form,

VARIETIES OF POTTERY.

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ornamentation, and finish of workmanship, as soon as the artistic and intellectual culture of these same peoples attains a superior stage of development, and the individual genius of each of them, released from the fetters of instinctive imitation, can freely follow its peculiar bent.

The most ancient pottery, like that of our own day, was employed for the most various purposes. Drinking cups, cooking vessels of cylindrical or very expanded shapes, offering a large surface to the action of the heat, provision vessels, amphoræ, vessels for draining the whey from cheese, almost identical with those now employed for the same purpose in the south of France; lamps, sometimes taken for vessels for containing cream; funeral urns even-nothing is wanting to the pottery of those remote times if it be not the foolish luxury and the wasteful uselessness of these days. It is even rare to see prehistoric pottery covered with any species of glaze, even with that black glaze obtained so easily from graphite and sea salt.