130 Annals of the South African Museum. 



do not appear to have been decorated ; nor do I know of any 

 ornamental pottery treated with a decorative pattern from the 

 Outeniqua and Tzitzikamma Districts, except the pots from Mossel 

 Bay ; but shards from Kowie and from the Natal coast, Cut 2, 

 Fig. 129, are known to have been so ornamented. 



In a Cape Flats midden there have, however, been found, but in 

 one locality only, fragments with a series of perforation represented 

 in Fig. 192 of PL XXVI.- 



In the inland districts we meet with decorated fragments, and the 

 pattern varies between that of Cuts 1 and 3 of Fig. 192. We have 

 examples from the Stormberg, Cape Colony, where the incisions 

 form zones separated with a broad undecorated space. Examples 

 with such a decorative motive do away with the theory, w^hich 

 has been advanced, that the "up-country" Bushman in the process 

 of manufacture held the clay together by means of rush- baskets ; 

 the rushes would perish in the baking process, and the impres- 

 sion would remain. This process could not account for the broad 

 undecorated zone occurring between two decorated ones, and, in 

 addition, the knots of the meshes should have had to be extremely 

 thick to leave the very deep impressions such as those we meet. 



The decoration, when it exists, is not due to a mechanical process; 

 it is a deliberate, intentional act. 



I am not at all sure of the use these more or less ovoid-conical 

 pots w'ere put to. It might be urged a priori that they were cooking 

 vessels, t 



In all our examples the greater part of the sui'face from the ears 

 downwards is doubtless blackened, and the upper, including the neck, 

 is redder. The lower part of the specimen represented in PL XXIV., 

 Fig. 178, is also black, but this colour is due to a kind of glaze, 

 possibly caused by a mixture with the clay, or by an outer coating 

 of the milky juice of an Euphorbia. [ 



Then, suspension over a fire by means of the two ears would 



* We have three such pieces which seem to have been part of one single 

 receptacle. 



t Kolben is not explicit on this point. Speaking of the potter's art among the 

 Hottentots, he says of them: "They place this clay on a flat stone, and then, 

 without any other tool than the fingers, they, pastry-cook-like, give to the vases 

 nearly the same shape that the Eomans gave to their urns," i.e., (?) amphorae. 



Ibid. : " In order to bake the vessel, the pot, when sufficiently dried in the sun, 

 was deposited in a hole and fire made all round it. ' 



\ This method, I am informed, prevails still among the Hottentot aboriginals of 

 Port NoUoth. Kolben avers that the clay is taken from the white ant (Termite) 

 nests, and that the larvse mixed with the same give in the burning process more 

 cohesion to the clay. This is of course absurd. 



