CHARACTERIZATION OF ACCOMPANYING PAPER 



Priuuiril)' Professor Hobnes's monograph on aboriginal pot- 

 tery of eastern United States is a description of the fictile 

 ware classified hj districts, so far as practicable by tribes, and 

 also by technologic types. The art of the potter is old, far 

 older tlian written histor^-, so that its beginnings can ne\'er l)e 

 traced directh'. The antique and prehistoric wares them- 

 selves yield a partial record of the development of the art, and 

 tlie arclicologists of the Old World have been able to supjde- 

 nu^ut and extend the written history of pottery making 

 through study of such material, and their researches have lent 

 interest to the ancient vessels and sherds with which the 

 museums of the world are enriched. Yet the . fictile ware of 

 Egypt and Babylonia, Etruria and India, and other r)ld 

 World pi-ovinces falls far short of telling the whole stor}- of 

 the art, since it fails to reveal the actual motives and senti- 

 ments of the early artisans — the relics are husks of the history 

 of pottery making without the vital kernel. Accordingly the 

 archaeologic studies in America supplement the European re- 

 searches in a highly useful way. In the first place, the ])eriod 

 of pottery making by the American aborigines was compara- 

 tively short, so that the prehistoric and the historic are closely 

 related; and, in the second place, the several liAing tribes 

 within reach of current observation represent various stages 

 in the development of the art, so that opportunities exist iu 

 America for studying the motives and sentiments of the arti- 

 sans engagiMl in all of the earlier developmental stages of the 

 art. In genci-al, the craft of tlie ])Otter may he said to arise in 

 the social stage of savagery or the psychic stage of imitation, 

 with its tedious growth through accidental improvement; iu 

 general, too, the art may Ije said to expand and difi'erentiate 

 hi the succeeding barbaric stag-e witli tlic attendant divinatory 



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