Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

[25] H. Colley March, “The Meaning of Ornament, or its Archæology and its Psychology,” Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Ant. Soc., 1889.

[26] Copied from J. Evans, Bronze Implements, p. 148.

[27] F. Keller, The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other parts of Europe. Second edition, 1878, p. 565.

[28] “Pagan Ireland,” The Century Magazine, xxxvii., 1889, p. 368.

[29] F. Keller, The Lake Dwellings, etc, p. 565.

[30] O. Montelius, “Sur les Poignées des Epées et des Poignards en Bronze,” Congr. prehist. Stockholm, 1874, ii. p. 891.

[31] In Oceania pottery is unknown save in the West, and there only sporadically. It is absent in Polynesia except in the Tonga Islands, where it is doubtless due to Fiji influence. Its distribution in Melanesia is erratic; for example, it occurs in the Fiji Islands, New Caledonia, and the Loyalty Islands. Rude, unglazed dishes are made in Espiritu Santo (R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, 1891, p. 315), but not Aurora, in Pentecost and Lepers’ Island in the New Hebrides, nor in Banks’ Islands, Torres Islands, Santa Cruz Group, and most of the Solomon Islands. While wanting in the Bismarck Archipelago, it occurs in New Guinea. But even where pottery is made it is very local and confined to certain tribes. For example, in British New Guinea (A. C. Haddon, The Decorative Art of British New Guinea, 1894, pp. 149, 222-224) it is made only in the south-east peninsula and in some of the adjacent islands. In scattered villages, or even in parts of villages, from Yule Island to Maopa in Aroma, pottery is made from clay in the lump; but in the Engineer Group, and especially in Wari (or Teste Island), the clay is laid down in a spiral, and no stone and beater are used, but it is smoothed by a Tellina shell. This method is described and figured by Dr. Finsch (O. Finsch, Samoafahrten, 1888, p. 280; Ethnological Atlas, 1888, Plate IV.). The upper border of these pots, he says, “exhibits various simple band patterns, which are scratched with fork-like bamboo instruments, and which serve not as ornamentation but as trade-marks. Thus here also (as at Bilibili) each woman has her own mark, with which she signs her fabrication.” I have elsewhere (cf. Decorative Art of British New Guinea, p. 223) printed an extract from the unpublished journal of Dr. H. O. Forbes, in which he gives an account of the method of making pottery at Wari. Fig. [23] is a copy of Dr. Forbes’ sketches of these slightly decorated vessels. In German New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land) pottery is made from the lump, as among the Motu of British New Guinea, at Sechstroh River (Humboldt Bay), Goose Bay (Dallmann Harbour), the island of Bilia (Eickstedt Island in Prince Henry Harbour), and more especially at the island of Bilibili in Astrolabe Bay. Dr. Finsch claims that this pottery is of better quality and better decorated than that of the south-east coast. Some of the vessels are ornamented with small bosses. But the insignificant patterns, frequently made with the finger-nail, are probably intended, as in Port Moresby, for trade-marks, and not merely for ornament. From their extremely local and scattered distribution it is evident that the pottery makers of New Guinea are not autocthones, but belong to the waves of Melanesian immigration that have washed the coast and neighbouring islands.

In speaking of New Caledonia Baron L. de Vaux (L. de Vaux, “Les Canaques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie,” Rev. d’Ethnog., ii., 1883, p. 340) says, “formerly the women of Pouébo, Oubatche, and Pam had the monopoly; now the art tends more and more to disappear as the natives find it more practical to buy trade vessels. They succeeded in making pots to the height of two feet, and very often decorated externally with lizards and frogs in relief. The base being ready, they superimpose rings of well-prepared clay the one above the other, holding them and joining them from the interior with the left hand, whilst they smooth their work externally by means of the right hand and of a little beater of smooth, hard wood.”

Mr. Atkinson (J. J. Atkinson, “Notes on Pointed Forms of Pottery among Primitive Peoples,” Journ. Anth. Inst., xxiii., 1893, p. 90) also describes the New Caledonian method of making pottery, and draws attention to the fact that the occasional traces of faint horizontal marks occasioned by the technique “imitate the marks left by pottery made on the system of plastering wickerwork employed by some people,” and therefrom he suggests a necessary warning not to take the latter method as having been of universal occurrence.

[32] E. H. Man, “Nicobar Pottery,” Journ. Anth. Inst., xxiii., 1893, p. 21.