Abstract
THE pretentious title of this publication will disappoint the student in search of an adequate treatment of a difficult problem. Such a work would not be an easy task for even the most learned ethnographer, because it involves a knowledge of prehistoric and savage culture, acquaintance with the technique of work in clay, and a special familiarity with burial customs. It would be unfair to expect these qualifications in the hard-worked curator of a provincial museum. But it is sufficient to quote his comment on the discovery in pots from the so-called Danes' Graves near Driffield of the humeri of pigs: “so that we may assume that a shoulder of pork was food for the gods in the Early Iron Age.” He must be aware that the joint was intended as food for the dead man's spirit. The book is really only an edition de luxe of one of the useful penny pamphlets which Mr. Sheppard has issued from time to time for the instruction of unlearned visitors to the museum at Hull. It is fortunate in possessing a good collection of early Staffordshire ware, with examples of the Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, Dresden, and other famous schools. From these materials the “Evolution of the Potter's Art” is worked out in six pages. The best point about the work is the series of sixty-two photographs of the more interesting specimens in the collection.
The Evolution of the Potter's Art.
By T. Sheppard. Pp. xx. (London: Brown and Sons, Ltd., n.d.)
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The Evolution of the Potter's Art . Nature 95, 672 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095672c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095672c0