Pottery. 27 



ground lias been used as a ploughed field until the wind recently 

 removed the surface soil and exposed what must have l)een the 

 camping place of a Hottentot horde. 



There a-^ still some heaps of stones on this ground which show 

 plain signs that they were used as fire-places and there are a few 

 mounds of shell which prove that these people lived to a certain 

 extent on shells. ^ A few broken marrow bones of a large animal 

 (Bufl'alo ?) were also found. Bits of pottery were strewn all ovei-. 

 There were also numerous pieces of ochre in various colours. 

 Of stone-implements, rubbers (or "mullers") were very numerous. 

 A few of these were collected by Mr. Bowker and uiyself, and 

 we also brought away the following, most of which were found by 

 Mr. Bowker : 1- grooved stone (usually considered to be an arrow- 

 sharpener) ; 1 complete shallow biconcave stone-dish ; halves of 2 

 other shallow dishes ; fiat digging-stones (2 complete, 1 with 

 exceixtric hole, 1 in which the perforation is not complete, and one 

 half of another) ; 3 stone knives and a scraper. As cutting stone- 

 imjjlements were verj' scarce, and as there was almost an entire 

 absence of stone implements that could be used as spear-heads or 

 arrow-heads, though they are frequent in kitchen-middens only a 

 few hundred yards distant (at the mouth of the Rufanes river), it 

 is possible that this encampment was used at a comparatively 

 recent date. This view is strengthened by the finding of a bit of 

 coarse native pottery (made like some European prehistoric pot- 

 tery of clay mixed with coarse quartz sand), wdiich can only 

 have been the neck of a bottle copied from a European model. 

 Mr. Bowker told me that when his father came to the adjoining 

 farm Tharfield in J 820 with the British Settlers, some of the 

 strandloopers of the neighbourhood were employed by them in 

 burning lime, and it is quite possil)le that the encampment does 

 not date further back than the time of the British settlement of 

 Lower Albany. 



Five pots similar to the one descriljed above (though not of such 

 an elegant form) and also ascribed to Hottentots are in the col- 

 lections of the S. A. Museum, Capetown. Mr. L. Peringney, F.E.S., 

 was good enough to have them photographed for me. Four of them 



' The following shells were represented on the mounds : Gominella porcata, 

 HalioUs midm, Oxystele merula, Patella rustica, P. tabular is, P. sp.^ 

 Purpura capensis, Turbo cidaris. 



I am indebted to Ool. Grant, of Port Alfred, for oalling my attention to 

 this "kitchen-midden." 



