22 



WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13TH, 190 1. 



i;ij£ f 0tt0rg of f r^Ijtstnrtt antr 

 Enmau IBritam, 



BY 



Mr. H. S. TOMS 



(Acting Curator^ Brighton Museum). 



THE earliest chapters in the history of the potter's art in our 

 country lie hidden in the obscurity of pre-historic times : 

 and, as to the origin or introduction of this art into Great 

 Britain, the evidence afforded is much too fragmentary to enable 

 one to form any valid conclusion. 



The first traces of the pre-historic potter consist of the few 

 fragments of rude hand-made pottery occasionally found in the 

 Long Barrows, or burial mounds, constructed by man during 

 the Neolithic or latest period of the Stone Age. 



Stone Age Pottery. — Of the pottery of the Stone Age but 

 little is known owing to its extreme rarity. As far as I am able to 

 ascertain, not a vestige of it has been discovered during the 

 investigations of their flint mines and entrenchments. It seems 

 solely confined to the burial mounds ; in them it but infrequently 

 occurs, and then, invariatjly, in a fragmentary condition. In the 

 majority of instances, moreover, its position in the barrows leads 

 to the supposition that its occurrence there is purely fortuitous, it 

 being generally found either in the body of the barrow away from 

 the primary interment or at the bottom of the ditch surrounding 

 the barrow. These fragments, in all probability, constitute the 

 remnants of the easily broken domestic vessels of the persons 

 employed in the construction of the mound. The custom of 

 burying pottery in any shape or form with the dead does not seem 

 to have existed. Only one instance is known of a vessel being 

 found in a fragmentary condition with the primary interment. This 

 was discovered by Dr. Thurnam in a long barrow at Norton 

 Bavant, Wilts. It is figured in vol. 42 of the " Archseologia," p. 

 194, from which I have made the full-size sketch I now exhibit. 



