SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— Hi 363 



Mr. G. R. Carline. — Primitive Weaving at Bankfield Museum. 



Primitive weaving implements and the early history of weaving is essentially a 

 suitable subject to illustrate in a museum like Bankfield Museum at Halifax, as that 

 town is in the centre of the weaving trade. It was on this account that the late 

 H. Ling Roth, one of the chief authorities on primitive weaving, decided to exhibit 

 this subject at Bankfield Museum as fully as he could. The collection starts with the 

 usually accepted theory that weaving is probably derived from mat-making and 

 basketry. The chief feature in weaving is the loom, and the evolution of the loom 

 and the distribution of the various types as well as the evolution and distribution of 

 the various accessories is the main purpose of the collection. At present the looms 

 have been divided into those for mat-work, or in other words for unspun filament, 

 and those in which a spun filament is used. Looms again can be divided into vertical, 

 semi-vertical and horizontal, but probably more important than the position is the 

 method of obtaining the ' shed.' The most primitive method is to obtain it by hand, 

 but a great advance was made when the use of a rod was introduced to which the 

 alternate warp threads were attached. This is the rod-heddle. The frame-heddle, 

 which is usually worked by the feet, enabled further advances to be made in devices 

 to accelerate the speed of working. 



Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr. — A Traveller's Impressions of the Physical 

 Superiority of the so-called Uncivilised and Subject Races and its Causes. 



Notwithstanding the unhealthy climates in which certain native tribes and races 

 are living, and in spite of, or perhaps because of, hard conditions of life, the author 

 assumes from their general appearance, apart from medical statistics, that the physique 

 of such people is superior to that of the European city-dweller. He cites some able 

 and distinguished authorities as to cause and cure — breeding from the unfit being 

 one of the former. 



Visit to the Bankfield Museum, Halifax. 



Tuesday, September 6. 



Dr. H. Frankfort. — The Early Prehistoric Painted Pottery of the Near 

 and Middle East. 



The earliest painted pottery of which we know seems to be that of Susa I. At 

 Tepe Khazineh, Tell el Obeid, and Abu Shahrein we find its descendants. But 

 westward of the Persian mountains it appears in the earliest (pre-Sumerian ?) period. 

 It is characteristic, however, for the Persian-Armenian Highlands ; for in Seistan we 

 find a descendant of the Susa I, pottery, with evidence that it persisted there while 

 in Susa itself the second civilisation with its north-western affinities flourished. And 

 it seems to have extended at least as far north as Rhages. Probably the early pottery 

 from Samarra and that from Tell Zeidan belongs to it, and it may therefore be that 

 originally Mesopotamia, as far north as the Middle Euphrates, has belonged to this 

 culture. But on the whole the ' Fertile Crescent ' is culturally opposed to its eastern 

 neighbour. The earliest pottery of Palestine and Syria dated by its exportations into 

 predynastic Egypt is different. This civilisation of the plains, which we may call 

 perhaps North Syrian, is predominant in Southern Mesopotamia at the time of the 

 earliest appearance of the Sumerians, and precedes these newcomers in Northern 

 Mesopotamia. It is marked by polychrome pottery and theriomorphic vases, and 

 extends from North Syria via Assur and Kish up to Susa II, thus hardly leaving the 

 lowlands. Architectural and other characteristics contrast it with the Sumerian 

 civilisation, and it may well be responsible for the Semitic element in Mesopotamia. 

 Beyond Taurus there is from the beginning a third civilisation, marked first by 

 monochrome black and then by red wares. Whether any connection existed with 

 the civilisation of the Persian-Armenian Highlands earlier than the movements of 

 peoples which mark the opening of the second millennium B.C., we cannot say with 

 certainty, but it seems probable. 



The painted pottery discovered in India is partly late, and then connected with 

 Nal in Beluchistan ; some of it, however, is similar to that from Tell Kaudeni in the 



