Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/626

602 POTTERY [PREHISTORIC. Kilns. Kilns for firing Pottery. The earliest form of kiln, as represented in Egyptian wall-paintings, is a tall circular chamber of brick, with a perforated floor near the bot tom. The fuel was introduced from an opening on one side, and raked in under the brick floor. The pottery to be baked was piled up in the upper part of the chamber. Fig. 3, from a potter s votive tablet from Corinth, shows an early Greek form of kiln, with a place for the fuel on one side, and a door in the side of the up per chamber through which the pottery could be put in and withdrawn. The Cor inthian kiln differs _, , -[-, . FIG. 3. Early Greek pottery- kiln, about _ Egyptian 700-600 B.C., from a painted votive tablet kiln in being domed found at Corinth, now in the Louvre. The over, but it is the section shows the probable construction of same in principle. the ^ iln> Even at the present day kilns shaped almost exactly like this early Greek one are still largely used. SECTION I. PREHISTORIC. Pre- The art of making pottery is one of the most extreme historic, antiquity ; with the exception of the cave-dwellers of the Drift or Palaeolithic period it was practised by all known prehistoric races from the Neolithic age downwards. The sepulchral barrows of Britain and other European countries have supplied vast stores of this earliest kind of pottery. It is mostly formed of coarse clay, generally brown in colour, though sometimes grey or reddish ; some few specimens are fine in texture and have a slightly glossy surface. The clay, while moist, has been kneaded with some care, and is often mixed with a proportion of gravel, coarse sand, quartz crystals, or pounded pottery. The more carefully made specimens, chiefly those of the bronze and iron ages, are frequently covered with a smooth slip, made of the same clay as the body, but finely pounded and thoroughly mixed. All are alike " hand-made," without any assistance from the potter s wheel ; some of the smaller ones are scooped out of a solid ball of clay, while in some cases great skill has been shown in the building up, by the unaided hand, of the thin walls of larger vessels, some of which are so round and neatly formed as to appear at first sight to be wheel- made. This, however, is never the case with the pottery of the three great prehistoric periods. The shapes found in the sepulchral barrows of Britain, France, Scandinavia, and other countries are usually classified thus (1) cinerary urns, (2) food vessels, (3) drinking-cups, and (4) the so-called "incense cups" (see fig. 4). (1) Cinerary urns, usually found full of burned bones, are the largest, varying from 12 to 18 inches in height. They are mostly less ornamented and less carefully made than the smaller vessels. Most have their decoration confined to a band round the upper part of the pot, or often only a projecting flange lapped round the whole rim. A few have small handles, formed of pierced knobs of clay, and sometimes projecting rolls of clay looped, as it were, all round the urn. (2) Food-vessels vary considerably in size and form. Some are shaped like a tea-cup, with a handle on one side ; others are like small cinerary urns, either quite plain or with pierced knob- handles and bands of ornaments incised or impressed. (3) Drink- Drinking-cup. Domestic bowl. FIG. 4. Various forms of prehistoric pottery. ing-cups, mostly from 6 to 8 inches high, vary but little in form, and are usually completely covered with ornament. They are often made with considerable care and skill, and are not ungraceful in shape. The names given to the preceding three classes possibly express their real use, but the name of the fourth class, " incense cups," is purely imaginary. Under this head are comprised a number of small vessels of very varied shape, some with their sides pierced through with square or lozenge - shaped openings, while others, almost globular in shape, have several pierced knob-handles, as if for suspension. Some are quite plain, and others are covered with ornament. Their use is unknown; one possible suggestion is that they were intended to carry fire from some sacred source to light the funeral pyre. Canon Green well, probably the best authority on this subject, believes, contrary to the opinion of many anti quaries, that none of the above classes of barrow - pottery were intended for domestic use, but that they were made solely to be buried with the dead. He considers that a fifth class of pottery, chiefly in the form of bowls, which has occasionally been found, not in barrows but in dwellings, is the only kind that was actually used for domestic purposes by prehistoric man (see Greenwell, British Barrows, 1877). The ornament which is often lavishly applied on prehistoric pottery is of especial interest. It frequently consists of lines of small dots impressed from a notched piece of wood or metal, arranged in various patterns crosses, chevrons, or zigzags. All the patterns were stamped into the body of the pot before it was hardened by fire. The lines w r ere frequently made by pressing a twisted thong of skin against the moist clay, so that a sort of spiral sunk line was produced. Other bands of ornament were made by wooden stamps ; the end of a hollow round stick was used to form a row of small circles, or a round stick was used sideways to produce semicircular depressions. In some cases the incised lines or dots have been filled up with a white slip of pipeclay. Con siderable taste and invention arc shown by many of these combined ornaments, and a certain richness of decorative effect is produced on some of the best drinking-cups ; but one thing is to be noted : all the main lines are straight, no wavy lines or circles appearing, except in very rare instances a fact which points to the very limited artistic development attained by the prehistoric races. Prehistoric pottery has sometimes been described as "sun-baked," but this is not the case ; however imperfectly baked, the pieces have all been permanently hardened by fire, otherwise they would certainly not have lasted to our time. This was done in a very rough and imperfect manner, not in a kiln but in an open fire, so that in some cases the pots have received a superficial black colour from the smoke of the fuel. Great quantities of this pottery have been found in the sepulchral barrows of Great Britain and Ireland ; those from the latter country are usually very superior in neatness of execution to the British specimens. The British Museum is specially rich in this class of pottery, chiefly the result of excava tions made in British barrows by Canon Greenwell. For prehistoric pottery, see Greenwell, British Harrows, 1877 ; Lubbock, Prehistoric Tims, 1865; Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, 1880; U

Habitations Lacustres, 1800 ; Borlase, Neenia CornuUte, 1872.