National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Forms.—As the entire family is, upon the whole, rather rare, the series of
forms is also very limited. There occur for the most part the simplest bowls or
cups, similar to figs. 144 and 145. High, projecting feet are also recognized on
some broken pieces. Forms with profiles, like figs. 187–189, are new. Ornaments
have not been found at all on fragments of red pottery.

(d) Coarse Ware.

In connection with the good wheel pottery, which one must designate as
"art pottery," there was also a coarse ware in use, made for the most part of coarse
and badly washed clay. Badly burnt vessels, made both upon the wheel and
with the hand, were found. Of this kind is the pithos a found in terrace B (plate 18,
fig. 8). Near a skeleton in terrace B was found a vessel of this technique (men-
tioned above), height 16.5 cm. (plate 13, fig. 4).

(e) Ornamentation.

As regards the ornamentation, in the middle strata it plays a surprisingly
unimportant part. The more the wheel technique gained in importance in form-
ing the vessels, the more did the potter seek to express beauty largely through
form. Ornamentation is produced partly through incision, partly painted.

(1) Incised Ornament.

The incised technique is confined to the gray ware and vessels of light-colored
clay. Thus far none has been found in the red monochrome ware. On vessels
of light-colored clay, the decoration is in the form of wavy lines and horizontal
grooves. A piece of very fine light-brown clay, shown on plate 14, fig. 1, comes
from +23 feet 7 inches to +21 feet 5 inches in terrace B. The fragment shown
in plate 14, fig. 2, has a correctly executed zone-decoration, with groups of parallel
wave-lines and horizontal grooves. It was found in the upper digging at +29 feet.

Of another kind, but very delicate in execution and effect, are the ornaments
on the fragments of fine brown clay shown in plate 14, figs. 3 and 4. One of them,
with fine, parallel, short striæ and vandyke patterns, was found in the upper digging
near pithos d, at +25 feet 5 inches; the other, with rows of similar short striæ,
came from the "mixed" layer of terrace A, above the level of +22 feet.

On gray vessels the incised ornamentation, like the technique of the vessels
themselves, is both fine and coarse, but it is on the whole rare. Marginal pieces
of steep-walled beakers and bowls occur in fine technique, some ornamented
with delicate horizontal ridges, the pattern executed in very fine scratched lines.
These may be parallel wave-lines, as in plate 15, fig. 2 (from terrace B between
+21 feet 5 inches and +23 feet 7 inches); or patterns of semicircular curves as
in plate 15, fig. 4 (from terrace C, at +26 feet 2 inches to +29 feet); or again,
of obliquely placed groups of lines with fringed edges, as in plate 15, fig. 3 (from
terrace B between +21 feet 5 inches and +23 feet 7 inches) and plate 15, fig. 1
(from terrace C between +23 feet 2 inches and +26 feet 2 inches). Somewhat
coarser are the patterns on vessels with thick walls, but of fine clay; being trellis
triangles, as in plate 15, fig. 5 (from terrace C, between +19 feet 5 inches and +21