E. Biomorphic Pottery.
In the description of the primitive methods of pottery manufacture, allusion was made to the fact that vegetable and animal forms were copied by the early artificers.
Although the immediate originals of many kinds of clay vessels were baskets of various kinds, we must not forget that these also were often textile imitations of natural objects. Gourds which are of almost ubiquitous occurrence undoubtedly were early and independently utilised as vessels. For the more convenient porterage of them they would be enclosed in netting or basketry. The better the accessories became, the less need for the original foundations, especially as the latter were brittle. From the fact that the shape of certain baskets in a district resemble those of the gourds of that district, we may assume that this process of evolution has operated spontaneously in diverse places. Clay vessels which were modelled from the suggestion of such baskets would thus remotely be phyllomorphs but having an intermediate skeuomorphic stage.
Instead of this indirect mode of origin a more direct one has often occurred. Messrs. Squier and Davis[110] record: “In some of the southern states (of North America), it is said, the kilns, in which the ancient pottery was baked, are now occasionally to be met with. Some are represented still to contain the ware, partially burned, and retaining the rinds of the gourds, etc., over which they were modelled, and which had not been entirely removed by the fire.” They also state that the Indians along the Gulf moulded their vessels “over gourds and other models and baked them in ovens.”
It is not necessary to believe that this has everywhere been the original ceramic gourd-derivatives, even among savage peoples. Once the power of working in clay was acquired, intentional copying of gourds (Figs. [107], [108]), or other vegetable vessels, may very well have occurred. This is rendered all the more probable from the fact that animal forms are modelled as earthen vessels. I am not here alluding to figures of men or of totem, sacred, or familiar animals which may belong to a somewhat higher stage of culture than that which we are now more particularly considering; but to clay utensils which are copied from receptacles which are the shells or other parts of animals.
Fig. 107.—Gourd; after Holmes.
