THE FIKST POTTEE 323 



they may have been employed afterwards as handles, as is 

 still done in the case of some South African pots : and, 

 when the rope handle wore off, the pattern made by its 

 indentation on the plastic material before sun-baking 

 would still remain as pure ornament. Probably the very 

 common idea of string-course ornamentation just below 

 ihe mouth or top of vases and bowls has its origin in this 

 early and almost universal practice. 



When other conscious and intentional ornamentation 

 began to supersede these rude natural and undesigned 

 patterns, they were at first mere rough attempts on the 

 part of the early potter to imitate, with the simple means 

 at his disposal, the characteristic marks of the ropes or 

 wickerwork by which the older vessels were necessarily 

 surrounded. He had gradually learned, as Mr. Tylor well 

 puts it, that clay alone or with some mixture of sand is 

 capable of being used without any extraneous support for 

 the manufacture of drinking and cooking vessels. He 

 therefore began to model rudely thin globular bowls with 

 his own hands, dispensing with the aid of thongs or 

 basketwork. But he still naturally continued to imitate 

 the original shapes the gourd, the calabash, the plaited 

 net, the round basket ; and his eye required the familiar 

 decoration which naturally resulted from the use of some 

 one or other among these primitive methods. So he tried 

 his hand at deliberate ornament in his own simple un- 

 tutored fashion. 



It was quite literally his hand, indeed, that he tried at 

 first ; for the earliest decoration upon palaeolithic pottery 

 is made by pressing the fingers into the clay so as to pro- 

 duce a couple of deep parallel furrows, which is the sole 

 attempt at ornament on M. Joly's Nabrigas specimen ; 

 while the urns and drinking-cups taken from our English 

 long barrows are adorned with really pretty and effective 



Y2 



