The Potter's Wheel 153 



it into fillets. These she wound carefully and symmetrically until 

 the vessel was built up. She further decorated and burned it, and 

 wore it out in household drudgery. The art at first was woman's." 

 As regards Africa, we owe a very able investigation to H. Schurtz, 1 

 whose studies of African conditions prompted him to the conclusion 

 that pottery everywhere appears to be an invention of woman, who 

 was more urgently in need of boiling water in the preparation of vege- 

 table food than man in dressing his hunting-spoils. A map constructed 

 by Schurtz, and illustrating the distribution of pottery over Africa, 

 shows at a glance that the largest territory is occupied by female 

 potters; that male potters occur only in Abyssinia, among the Galla 

 and Somali in eastern Africa, and this owing to Arabic influence. In 

 a few other areas men are engaged in the making of the bowls for their 

 cherished tobacco-pipes, while the women produce from clay all domes- 

 tic and kitchen utensils; and in a few localities only, men and women 

 co-operate in the ceramic industry. In regard to the Khasi in Assam, 

 Major Gurdon 2 observes, "The women fashion the pots by hand, they 

 do not use the potter's wheel." On the Nicobars the men take no 

 part in the construction of pots. 3 All over Melanesia, pottery is made 

 exclusively by women. The making of clay vessels is no longer prac- 

 tised by the Chukchi, but their old women (not the men) have a vivid 

 recollection of the clay kettles which were used in former times. 4 



The potter's wheel, however, is the creation of man, and therefore 

 is an independent act of invention which was not evolved from any 

 contrivance utilized during the period of hand-made ceramic ware. 

 The two processes have grown out of two radically distinct spheres of 

 human activity. The wheel, so to speak, came from another world. 

 It had no point of contact with any tool that existed in the old indus- 

 try, but was brought in from an outside quarter as a novel affair, when 



1 Das afrikanische Gewerbe, pp. 13-19. 



* TheKhasis, p. 61. 



• C. B. Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars, p. 107. According to E. H. 

 Man (On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, p. 154), the manu- 

 facture of pots on the Andamans is not confined to any particular class, or to either 

 sex, but the better specimens are generally produced by men. Compare the same 

 author's Nicobar Pottery (/. Anthr. Institute, Vol. XXIII, 1894, pp. 21-27). Also 

 among the Vedda pots are turned out by both men and women (C. G. Seligmann, 

 The Veddas, p. 324). 



4 W. Bogoras, in Mem. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XI, p. 186. The industry 

 of primitive pottery is fast dying out everywhere under the influence of "civiliza- 

 tion" (compare, for instance, M. R. Harrington, Catawba Potters and Their 

 Work, in Am. Anthr., Vol. X, 1908, pp. 399-407; and The Last of the Iroquois Pot- 

 ters, in N. Y. State Mus. Bull., 1909, pp. 222-227; as to Africa, see O. Baumann, 

 Globus, Vol. LXXX, 1901, p. 127). 



