October 6, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



443 



merly of the publications of the American 

 Museum of Natural History have won him 

 well-merited recognition on the part of the stu- 

 dents of anthropology. 



The author treats in detail work in stone, 

 pottery and work in metals. The principal 

 part of the work is devoted to a discussion of 

 pottery forms and decoration, and the work 

 must be considered an important contribution 

 to the study of decorative art. I think in this 

 lies its greatest interest. 



Although the author does not commit him- 

 self quite definitely in regard to any theory of 

 the development of art, his inclination, as ex- 

 hibited in the detailed discussion of specimens, 

 is clearly to consider geometrical ornament as 

 developed by conventionalization of realistic 

 motives, and he seems to consider this process 

 as occurring by an inner necessity. " If the 

 line of art development were plotted, it would 

 probably be found to rise rather suddenly to 

 the acme of realism, and then drop slowly to 

 about its original level. The accompanying 

 series of illustrations, however, does not begin 

 at the beginning, but rather at the crest of the 

 realistic wave, and descends gradually to the 

 trough, probably that one lying on the conven- 

 tional side; yet some of the stages shown 

 might just as well be steps in the ascending as 

 in the descending scale. In other words, a 

 definite chronological sequence has not yet 

 been established" (p. 57). Still in the next 

 sentence the author states that there are rea- 

 sons for considering realistic animal forms as 

 preceding conventionalized forms, but I have 

 not been able to find these reasons. Only in 

 the case of the transformation of simple forms 

 of objects into life forms does he admit the 

 inverse process. " We have now followed the 

 various steps in the development of the com- 

 plete zoomorphie unit from the commonplace 

 mealing stone " (p. 30) . " It did not require a 

 wide stretch of the imagination to arrive at 

 the zoomorphie possibilities of the plain tripod 

 leg. By the application of nodes and pellets of 

 clay to the hollow tripod supports they im- 

 mediately assume animal forms" (p. 51). 



The difficulty in proving or disproving these 



theories lies in the fact that the material 

 studied is not dated, that we do not know 

 whether some forms are older than others, or 

 whether all belong to the same time. That, 

 changes of artistic style have occurred in 

 these areas is more than likely, notwithstand- 

 ing the meagerness of proofs of cultural se- 

 quences on our continent. Dr. Spinden's 

 demonstration of changes in the technique of 

 an art style in Central America, the analo- 

 gous phenomena observed among the cruder 

 civilizations of the northwest coast, are im- 

 portant from this point of view which should 

 receive the closest attention of archeologists. 



It seems to the mind of the writer that the 

 chief objections to the attempted interpreta- 

 tion of the development of an artistic style 

 from a study of the undated object alone lie 

 in the formal character of the treatment of 

 the problem. Dr. MacCurdy, like his prede- 

 cessors, has given us a careful classification of 

 form and ornament, arranged according to 

 considerations of technique, and of greater or 

 less complexity of form. Among these he se- 

 lects the forms which seem most plausible as 

 the starting point of the series and the rest 

 are then arranged in order, a time sequence 

 being substituted for a series based on simi- 

 larities of form. It may be that the investi- 

 gator happens to strike the correct arrange- 

 ment, but, considering the complexity of the 

 problem and the possibilities of development 

 in various directions, the probability of hav- 

 ing reached a true historical explanation is 

 not very great. 



Dr. MacCurdy sums up the series of proc- 

 esses that lead to conventionalization as due 

 to reduplication, exaggeration, elimination or 

 fusion of parts of units; transposition, shift- 

 ing and substitution; isolation of parts and 

 their use independently of the whole; whole- 

 sale reduction and simplification; adaptation 

 to fit a given space (pp. 127, 229). All these 

 may occur, but they do not prove a historical 

 development, because they are merely an 

 enunciation of the principles of classification 

 or seriation chosen by the student. 



Wilhelm Wundt, in his Volkerpsychologie, 



