If any of the interlocking spirals on bowls or vases are traced, it is found that they do not join at the center of the figure. The same is true when these spirals become frets. There is always a break in the network which they form. This break is comparable with the hiatus on encircling bands and probably admits of the same interpretation. In a simple form this motive appears as two crescents or two key patterns with the ends overlapping. This simple ornament, called the friendship sign, is commonly used in the decoration of the bodies of _katcinas_, and has been likened to the interlocking of fingers or hands of the participants in certain dances, the fingers half retracted with inner surfaces approximated, the palms of the hands facing in opposite directions and the wrists at opposite points. If the points be extended into an elaborate key pattern or curved into extended spirals, a complicated figure is produced in which the separation is less conspicuous although always present. The same points may be modified into terraced figures, the separation then appearing as a zigzag line drawn across the figure, or they may have interlocking dentate or serrate prolongations imparting a variety of forms to the interval between them.[153] In order to trace out these modifications it would be necessary to specify each individual case, but I think that is unnecessary. In other words, the broken line appears to be a characteristic not only of simple encircling bands, but also of all geometric figures in which highly complicated designs extend about the periphery of a utensil. DECORATIONS ON THE EXTERIOR OF FOOD BOWLS The decorations on the exterior of the ancient food bowls are in most instances very characteristic and sometimes artistic. Generally they reproduce patterns which are found on the outside of vases and jars and sometimes have a distant relationship to the designs in the interior of the bowl upon which they occur. Usually these external decorations are found only on one side, and in that respect they differ from the modern food bowls, in which nothing similar to them appears. The characteristics of the external decorations of food bowls are symbolic, mostly geometric, square or rectangular, triangular or stepped figures; curved lines and spirals rarely if ever occur, and human or animal figures are unknown in this position in Sikyatki pottery; the geometric figures can be reduced to a few patterns of marked simplicity.