ss of
twisted cord on the wet clay. Sometimes these cords seem to have been
originally left on the clay in the process of baking, and used as a
mould; at other times they may have been employed afterwards as
handles, as is still done in the case of some South African pots: and,
when the rope handle wore off, the pattern made by its indentation on
the plastic material before sun-baking would still remain as pure
ornament. Probably the very common idea of string-course ornamentation
just below the mouth or top of vases and bowls has its origin in this
early and almost universal practice.

When other conscious and intentional ornamentation began to supersede
these rude natural and undesigned patterns, they were at first mere
rough attempts on the part of the early potter to imitate, with the
simple means at his disposal, the characteristic marks of the ropes or
wickerwork by which the older vessels were necessarily surrounded. He
had gradually learned, as Mr. Tylor well puts it, that clay alone or
with some mixture of sand is capable of being used without any
extraneous support for the manufacture of drinking and cooking vessels.
He therefore began to model rudely thin globular bowls with his own
hands, dispensing with the aid of thongs or basketwork. But he still
naturally continued to imitate the original shapes--the gourd, the
calabash, the plaited net, the round basket; and his eye required the
familiar decoration which naturally resulted from the use of some one or
other among these primitive methods. So he tried his hand at deliberate
ornament in his own simple untutored fashion.

It was quite literally his hand, indeed, that he tried at first; for the
earliest decoration upon paleolithic pottery is made by pressing the
fingers into the clay so as to produce a couple of deep parallel
furrows, which is the sole attempt at ornament on M. Joly's Nabrigas
specimen; while the urns and drinking-cups taken from our English long
barrows are adorned with really pretty and effective patterns, produced
by pressing the tip of the finger and the nail into the plastic
material. It is wonderful what capital and varied results you can get
with no more recondite graver than the human finger-nail, sometimes
turned front downward, sometimes back downward, and sometimes used to
egg up the moist clay into small jagged and relieved designs. Most of
these patterns are more or less plaitlike in arrangement, evidently
suggested to the mind