Niezidentyfikowany przedmiot gliniany z osady ludności kultury pucharów lejkowatych w Poganicach, pow. słupski, stan. 4

Abstract

Among hundreds of thousands potsherds produced by the Funnel Beaker settlement site in Poganice there was an almost spherical item, with its surface covered with 65 imprints of a fingernail. The imprints might have been done by a child, who tried to imitate activities related to the production of a ceramic vessel, although it seems more probable that the item was meant to be a toy. The artifact may possibly represent a method of recording numerical information, commonly known as tally marks, in which a quantity was recorded according to the rule: one item – one sign. However, the item might have been also produced unconsciously. In his theory of various intelligences, H. Gardner distinguished a kinaesthetic intelligence. A person with the dominant kinaesthetic intelligence is manually skilled, and has a habit of playing with variuos things while listening. Maybe, then, the item was unintentionally made by someone sitting at the fire and listening to the story being told by someone else while unconsciously playing with the clay ball?