The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
The uses of pottery are primarily domestic. Whether bowls, jars, and
other forms were used as receptacles in which to boil or stew or bake
matters not. Man invented pottery because it was more convenient for him
to make a receptacle out of clay and bake the clay than to hollow a bowl
out of stone. He moved in the line of least resistance, and it was
easier to make a bowl or a dish from clay than to carve such a utensil
from stone. While Indians roasted much of their meat on the end of
sticks, or baked the food in the ashes, yet they preferred to boil and
stew their foods. This is especially true of the established villages
where a profusion of pottery fragments abounds. It is natural to suppose
that as the ceramic art developed, to the variety of forms in clay, man
added the dish, the waterbottle, the effigy, and more or less
complicated forms of the jar or the bowl. And because nothing but true
cooking-pots are found in the Lake Superior region, New England, the
Delaware and Susquehanna valleys, I claim that the pottery art was not
developed in those regions beyond the manufacture of rough utensils to
be used about the fire. And although there is some mound pottery in Ohio
of such finish and character as to designate it as above, and pottery
was made use of in the culinary arts, yet these examples are rare and
denote rather a high culture in a certain locality than proficiency in
ceramic art. It is only in the central and southern portions of the
Mississippi Valley and in the Cliff-Dweller country that pottery-making
became an art.
[Illustration:
FIG. 650. (_S. about 1–10._)
_Various jars, bottles, and bowls, from graves and mounds in
southeastern Missouri. Collection of F. P. Graves, Doe Run,
Missouri._
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 651. (S. about 1–5.) The small vessel is just the size of a
teacup. The restored vessel has a diameter of eleven inches at the
top. Found at Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Collection of H. P. Hamilton,
Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 652. (S. about 1–5.) This pottery has been carefully restored. It
was found in Warehouse Point, Connecticut, and is thirty-eight and
one half inches in circumference and fifteen inches high. Collection
of A. E. Kilbourne, East Hartford, Connecticut.
]
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