64 INTEOBUCTION. 



The clay of which they are made differs much, both in its quality 

 and in the preparation, by means of tempering-, which it has under- 

 gone. As the vessels were probably manufactured on the spot, the 

 clay necessarily varied with the several localities ; and as greater 

 or less skill w^as at times employed, and they were more or less 

 hastily made, these differences are only such as might be expected. 

 In the greater number of all the vessels, and in the whole of the 

 larger ones, broken stone in various proportions is found to have 

 been mixed with the clay. In some cases there is almost as much 

 broken stone as clay in the composition. The stone usually con- 

 sists of such as was at hand ; on the w^olds, chalk and flint ; and 

 in other places, quartz, sandstone, granite, porphyry, or other 

 rocks. The object of this mixture was vo prevent the pottery from 

 cracking in the baking, and it also had the effect of making the 

 clay more firm before the firing, so that the shape of the vessel was 

 better preserved. The size of the pieces of stone varies consider- 

 ably : they are sometimes as large as a pea, at other times almost 

 as fine as sand. In the better-worked clay, of which the * drinking 

 cups ' and some of the 'food vessels ' are made, and where the walls 

 of the vase are thin, the broken stone is wanting ; and as a rule it 

 may be said, the thicker and coarser the pottery, the more stone 

 there is in its composition. Some of the vessels appear to have 

 been made from one mass of clay, and at once ; but others show 

 that they were formed of separate pieces laid together, the sides 

 being as it were gradually built up. This is ai)i)arent from the 

 smooth and rounded edges of the pieces into which a vessel has 

 sometimes separated from long exposure to damp in the ground 

 and from the pressure of the earth upon it, there being a tendency 

 for it to come asunder at those parts where the several pieces of 

 which it was formed had originally been joined. In many of 

 the cinerary urns the clay appears to have been made use of with- 

 out having been at all tempered ; but the finer vessels have had 

 the clay in many cases carefully prepared. Some of the pottery 

 seems to have been made by overlaying a coarser and ill-w^orked 

 clay with a coating of finer paste ; and it is not improbable that in 

 many cases the vessel was shaped at the first out of inferior clay 

 and partly dried, and that afterw^ards an additional layer of better- 

 tempered clay was laid over the surface, upon which the ornamental 

 patterns were executed, the whole being then fired. 



The colour varies to a great extent ; it is generally not very 

 unlike that of the clay in its natural state, and is then often of a 



