Chinese 'proto' money. Bronze balls joined in a 'string', of varying numbers - flat surface on the back. No inscriptions, or markings The measurement of this example is 36mm x 7mm. but I have various lengths of them, (greater and lesser numbers of 'balls'). Can someone tell me more about this form of early Chinese currency, please?
Hm. Interesting. Never seen anything like that. Can't find anything on the currency, but Chifeng is a city. There is an Ordos City, too, though I suspect in this case "Ordos" refers to the region, or perhaps the Ordos culture. And that's all I've got. Wikipedia.
Chinese Cowrie or "Shell Money" . I gather that the Chinese made similar metal forms of the shells or "strings", with the length being the value, not the metal content.
I bought something similar under the ID that they were from Ordos, somewhere over the silk road.....never really did check it up, not my area of expertise neither.
As stated they are often called bead or string money. However its pretty clear that they were never used as such. The Chinese have lots of surviving texts back to the Zhou Dynasty and while other forms of money are noted these are not. As far as I know they have always been found associated with graves and as such are likely some sort of offering, donative, luck charms, etc. They often have hooks or loops on the back showing they were likely attached to something, perhaps clothing. But I will say this. As metals were rare and expensive early on they almost certainly had value, or wealth as it were. I dont doubt they were possibly exchangeable for goods or services in some fashion, but I dont think they were intended to be used day to day but if so would likely have been localized in their use. Other objects from this period include bells, 'bridge', cicada, fish and others. We will never know for sure, though. Its what keeps numismatics and archaeology so interesting.
Oh. Meant to post this also. Two very good websites with excellent information: https://www.zeno.ru/ http://chinesecoins.lyq.dk/
Thank-you @Ken Dorney , @Alegandron ,@Andres2 , and to everyone else. I did try the internet but not knowing what it (they) were called, didn't help, and all of my search criteria drew blanks. It now becomes, Thank-you, again.
Whatever this is, my dog seems to produce a lot of it and I keep having to scoop it out of my yard every week. Who would have thought my dog was an expert at making ancient Chinese currency.
