An ancient jade carving from North Borneo
I.H.N. Evans describes a broken jade carving of a four-footed animal, acquired from a Bajau man in 1949 and now held in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge.
Summary
The carving, of dull orange to brick-red colour, depicts a four-footed animal with a rounded head, prominent eyes, and four humps on its back divided by a groove that Evans interprets as a channel for a suspensory cord, indicating the object was worn as a neck amulet. A finely bored hole passing from the back of the neck to the fractured surface suggests the break occurred while the piece was still in use and that the lost portion was similarly bored for reattachment. Evans speculates the missing fragment was a second head, noting that two-headed animals are not uncommon in South-East Asian design (p. 173).
Evans draws a probable link to the jade culture of Batangas Province in the Philippines, as documented by H. Otley Beyer, where jade ornaments of the late Neolithic “Yang shao” phase have been found. The provenance of the specimen is limited to the seller’s statement that it had belonged to his father (p. 173).