ARTS AND HANDICRAFTS 



3 2 9 



and plates were placed with the dead in the graves, and these 

 even now may excite our wonder and admiration. 



There were two ways in which the potters (who were the 

 women) could carry out their object. They could either work 

 from a lump, that is. from a mass of clay already roughly cut to 

 the size required, or they could construct a vessel by degrees 

 by building up or sticking together small pieces one upon 

 another. 



In the first method the tools used in hollowing out the 

 lump of clay were either the fingers, or else the elbow which 

 was twisted round in the mass : or a mallet was used to beat 



FIG. 158. Neolithic pottery from South-west Germany. (After Schiiz.) 



and hammer it from within outwards, while with the left hand 

 it was held on one of the so-called anvil stones. Still simpler 

 is the method of working on the lump employed by the inhabi- 

 tants of the Andaman Islands, who merely scrape out the mass 

 of clay layer by layer with a mussel shell until the pot has 

 attained the desired shape. The method of gradually building 

 up small pieces of clay is the converse of this; the woman 

 either lined the walls of a hole in the earth with a layer of clay, 

 or else, on a hand-made bottom, she piled little rolls or lumps of 

 clay and modelled it into layers with both hands. The polish 

 was attained as it is now among primitive peoples by rubbing 

 with mussel shells or smooth pebble stones. 



