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Not far off he discovered another workshop, containing some very fine hatchets perfectly polished, and some keramic ware tastily ornamented. The progress made is as marked in the weapons and tools as in the pottery.
A curious verbal relic of the use of horns as drinking-cups survives indeed down to almost modern times in the Greek word keramic, still commonly applied to the art of pottery, and derived, of course, from keras, a horn; while as to skulls, not only were they frequently used as drinking-cups by our Scandinavian ancestors, but there still exists a very singular intermediate American vessel in which the clay has actually been moulded on a human skull as model, just as other vessels have been moulded on calabashes or other suitable vegetable shapes.
The usual color of the keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow, and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are some of those of Santorin.
We followed the various steps of manufacture until the finished ware, hand-painted, and burned many times to bring out the colors, was ready for shipment. An extensive museum connected with the works is filled with rare specimens to delight the soul of the admirer of the keramic art.
It was this curious early observation of evolving keramic art that made Goguet an anthropologist born out of due season first hit upon that luminous theory of the origin of pottery now all but universally accepted. Plenty of evidence to the same effect is now forthcoming for the modern inquirer.
Thus, upon all sacred vessels, from the drums of the esoteric medicine societies of the priesthood and all vases pertaining to them to the keramic appurtenances of the sacred dance or Kâ´ kâ, all decorations were intentionally emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels, I will choose but one for illustration the prayer-meal-bowl of the Kâ´ kâ.
The Keramic Museum of Sevres contains several specimens which present very notable differences to each other. Those from Chateau-Gontier are formed of very close-grained quartzite granite of a greenish color streaked with black. The conglomerate welding there together is a vitrified scoria full of very small bubbles made by the escape of gas which had not had sufficient strength to get out.
Among the remains of the newer Stone Age, on the other hand, comparatively abundant keramic specimens have been unearthed, without doubt or cavil, from the long barrows the burial-places of the early Mongoloid race, now represented by the Finns and Lapps, which occupied the whole of Western Europe before the advent of the Aryan vanguard.
There was a period when Keith seriously believed that all specimens of the keramic art were inkstands in disguise. Art not represented on the bureau alone, however.
In the lowest layers he made out ancient hearths, and found numerous fragments of pottery which are the most ancient examples of keramic ware found in New England, and were covered with incised ornamentation of considerable refinement. The kitchen-middings of Florida and Alabama are even more remarkable.
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