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122    University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn.  [Vol. 20
                        Certain characteristics are common to both the plain and deco-
                     rated balls. They are made from a yellowish clay slightly mixed with
                     grit and are of forms and sizes easily mioulded with the two hands;
                     they are fairly well fired. Most of the specimens show that they have
                     been fashioned by simple hand moulding; a few, while not exhibiting
                     this fact unmistakably, could readily have been made in such a
                     manner. In no instance has any specimen of this sort, either deco-
                     rated or plain, been found associated with the bones of a dead person,
                     in, or near, a grave, or in general in such a location as to lead to the
                     belief that these clay balls were highly regarded or buried with the
                     dead. On the contrary almost all of them have been found in, or
                     near fireplaces, refuse heaps, abandoned camp sites, etc.
                        Of the plain variety, the enormous numbers of fragments and
                     goodly quantity of perfect specimens all show repeated heating and
                     cooling, and their presence in the refuse heaps and ash pits leads to
                     the belief that they were purely utilitarian. When it is remembered
                     that the soil for miles around is quite free from stones of size usable
                     for cooking stones-a pebble the size of a hen's egg is large and rare
                     -and when we recall the very important place that cooking stones
                     held in the domestic economy of the California Indian, an explanation
                     of these clay balls presents itself. Following the discovery that baked
                     clay makes a very good substitute for stone would be the moulding
                     and baking of suitably sized masses of clay for use as cooking stones.
                     Repeated heating and rapid cooling soon cracks fired clay, hence the
                     large number of fragments.
                        The decorated and unused specimens are but the next step in the
                     process of evolving manufactured articles from this comparatively
                     newly discovered material. I think they were not made with any
                     special purpose.  They seem to me rather the expression of the
                     fortuitous moulding of the pliable clay in the hands of one whose
                     occasional occupation was the making of balls to be used for cooking
                     stones. The shapes are truly primitive, as, for instance, a mass about
                     equal to that of the ordinary cooking ball flattened and rounded by
                     patting between the hands and decorated by simple indentation with
                     the finger nail or with a twig.
                        Idle effort having once demonstrated the possibilities of the easily
                     worked clay, directed effort might produce many forms and lead
                     eventually to the development of the potter's art. I cannot but look
                     upon these simple objects of baked clay as exceedingly interesting
                     specimens, representing, as they seem to, a preliminary step toward
                     the discovery of true pottery.
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