Archaeologists in general and students of ceramics in A particular largely live in an ancient world of their own creation. They have built up the background of the period they study by means of the material objects available to them, and they have filled in the gaps largely by hypothesis, analogy and guesswork. This, after all, is part of the game. They have decided that they have no alternative. Rarely and with caution they draw comparisons between living and dead primitive cultures. Usually they draw back in alarm, for aboriginal Australians and Bushmen have the irritating habit of not always coming up to the desired level of similarity when comparisons are made between them and men of Neolithic or earlier cultures. And so the archaeologists are driven in on themselves. Perhaps it is just as well.