Page 11 - philipmillsjones1923
P. 11
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.