On one such vase, found in Arkansas, and figured by the
Marquis de Nadaillac in his excellent work on Prehistoric America, the
ornamentation consists (in true Red Indian taste) of skeleton hands,
interspersed with crossbones; and the delicacy and anatomical
correctness of the detail inevitably suggest the idea that the unknown
artist must have worked with the actual hand of his slaughtered enemy
lying for a model on the table before him. Much of the early American
pottery is also coloured as well as figured, and that with considerable
real taste; the pigments were applied, however, after the baking, and so
possess little stability or permanence of character. But pots and vases
of these advanced styles have got so far ahead of the first potter that
we have really little or no business with them in this paper.
Prehistoric European pottery has never a spout, but it often indulges in
some simple form of ear or handle. The very ancient British bowl from
Bavant Long Barrow--produced by that old squat Finnlike race which
preceded the 'Ancient Britons' of our old-fashioned school-books--has
two ear-shaped handles projecting just below the rim, exactly as in the
modern form of vessel known as a crock, and still familiarly used for
household purposes. This long survival of a common domestic shape from
the most remote prehistoric antiquity to our own time is very
significant and very interesting. Many of the old British pots have also
a hole or two holes pierced through them, near the top, evidently for
the purpose of putting in a string or rope by way of a handle.
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