B44 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—H. 
Monday, August 31. 
Morninec. 
14. Prof. H. J. Rosr.—A proposed Explanation of Ritual Combats. 
It is commonly said, both by classical and modern anthropologists and writers 
on Comparative Religion, that a gladiatorial combat, when connected with ritual (as 
was, e.g., certainly the case in Etruria, besides non-European examples in Mexico, &c.), 
is a form of human sacrifice. This hardly squares with the fact that combats are often 
found in connexion with fertility magic all over the world, and that such combats, 
though often so ferocious as to involve loss of life (e.g. in Roman Africa in St. 
Augustine’s time), are not necessarily more than a sham fight. It looks as if the 
idea were rather that the fight itself was efficacious in some magical way. 
Das schlagen mit der Lebensrute will not, on the other hand, explain cases in which 
the fight, real or sham, is with objects of no particular magical importance, as stones 
or ordinary weapons. 
It is suggested (a) that the excitement and physical exaltation caused by fighting 
were early and widely interpreted as evidence of mana being present; (b) that, 
therefore, a fight was in general supposed to be a magically lucky proceeding ; 
(c) that in some cases, as the cult of the dead, or of a wargod, war-mana was wanted, 
and thus a real fight instituted; 7.e. an offering was made of courage or skill in arms, 
conceived as material things, quite as material as blood or flesh. 
15. Mr. A. M. Hocartr.—The Gods. 
16. Mr. G. R. Cartine.—Eahibition of lantern slides showing some types 
of Peasant Houses in Bosnia. 
The mountain village houses of the Christian peasants, with the hearth in the 
middle of the floor and smoke-hole in the shingles of the roof, are shown, as well as the 
town house, built of wood, sometimes with white plaster walls. The effect of a super- 
imposed religion is seen in the essential harem windows in the Mohammedan houses. 
17. Miss W. 8. Buackman.—The Making of Pottery in Ancient and 
Modern Egypt. 
The making of pottery by hand has been observed in the following provinces :— 
Fayum, Beni-Suef, Minia, Asyut, Girga, and Kena. In most cases women take as 
large a share in the work as men ; but when the wheel is used it is always the men who 
are the potters, though women often take their part in the finishing off of the pot. 
The pottery sites with which this paper deals are situated at Kusiyeh and Bad- 
raman in Asyut Province, and at Edfu and el-Hellah in Kena Province, as well as 
at El-Gherak in Fayum. 
Many of the methods employed in the making of pots in Egypt at the present day 
can be paralleled in ancient times. The cord-marking seen on modern pots of large 
size, manufactured on the wheel, can be seen on hundreds of the fragments of pottery 
which are strewn on the surface of ancient sites. Such cord-markings sometimes survive 
at the present day as a form of decoration, the marks originally made by the supporting 
cords being imitated by hand when the cord is no longer used. 
18. Capt. G. H. Prrr-Rivers.—Pagan Aua, Bismarck Archipelago. 
Between the first and second degree of South latitude lies a small flat coral island, 
forming one of a pair of small islands, usually referred to as the North Western 
Islands, owing to their situation in what has been known as the Bismarck Archipelago, 
to the north-east of New Guinea. The southernmost and better known of the two 
islands is known as Matty Island, or Wuwuloo in the vernacular. Some twenty 
miles north-east of it lies Aua Island, named Durour by the British navigator, 
Carteret. 
Up to 1921 Aua had not, like its sister island Wuwuloo, suffered an invasion — 
of imported, indentured labourers. It was also relatively freer from European 
contamination. 
