Equally instructive is the application of small nodes and fillets to pottery which has been explained by Dr. G. G. MacCurdy as resulting from degeneration of armadillo figures.[78] The essential characteristic of all this ware is the use of small nodes and fillets applied to the surface of the vessel or to some of its parts, like feet, neck, shoulder or handle. These attachments are decorated by a series of short parallel impressions. An oval node with single medial line or lines is often used to indicate an eye; a similar nodule with several parallel lines indicates the foot; a series of parallel, short fillets with short parallel crosslines, are applied to forms that represent animals, but they are also found on the bodies of vases. Dr. C. V. Hartman[79] and S. K. Lothrop[80] describe the same technical motives from other parts of Costa Rica. In technical character these are so much like the Chiriqui specimens that we can hardly doubt that they are derived from the same device. This method of decoration is widely spread. Its use extends over Central America and the West Indies. It is most characteristic of archaic ware, particularly figurines of this early period are always modelled by means of attaching nodules and fillets. During this period the eye is regularly represented by a nodule with one or several incisions. This technique is also found in Ecuador[81] up to more recent times. In the Toltec period the adornment of vessels by attached nodule decoration reached its highest development. In North America it is not common. Incised fillets occur in remains from the middle Mississippi region but even here they are not one of the pronounced features. In contrast with its frequency in the highly developed pottery of early Central America its rarity may be noted in Africa, where highly developed forms are by no means absent, and where lids with animal figures might seem to suggest readily the application of the device.[82] This is true also of the prehistoric pottery of Europe. The nodule appears in the pottery of Michelsberg, in Jaispitz (Moravia) and in a few other late localities. Only in the slip (barbotine) decorations of the terra sigillata do we find anything resembling the American appliqué ornamentation, but since the material is applied in a semifluid state, it does not attain the same freedom of treatment. Nodes that do occur in European prehistoric pottery were apparently made rather in imitation of punched bronze decorations and belong to a late period. Attached animal figures, made in clay, like those found at Gemeinlebarn, also seem to be imitations of metal work and have never reached that development which is so characteristic of Central American ceramic art. [78] George Grant MacCurdy, A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities, Memoirs Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 3 (1911), pp. 48 et seq. [79] C. V. Hartman, Archaeological Researchers in Costa Rica, Stockholm, 1901.