The scan shows a cast bronze item I received recently in a lot of coins from the reliable dealer Onlylinda. I have tried without success to identify it. I think it may be some form of proto-money as the character Shi (10) appears between the holes. The piece is 25x16mm and weighs 2.9g. Reverse is flat & plain. Can any of you experts shed any light?
I believe these were made from molds, so is it possible that this is a piece of metal that connected two coins when they were removed from the mold? That's really just a guess.
Possibly, but I don't think a casting sprue would be as complex - holes and characters. I suspect this is just a bit of miscellaneous junk.
The supplier who sold me this item has just listed a similar bigger pice described as follows: Ordos Late Bronze Age (c.1600-1200 BC) special money Mark 10 The Ordos culture comprises the period from Upper Paleolithic to the late Bronze age at the Ordos Desert, in the south of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, about 300 kilometers from modern Beijing. The area of the Ordos were predominantly Mongoloid known from their skeletal remains and artifacts, but numerous interactions between Europoid and Mongoloid might had also taken place there over the course of several centuries, until its occupation by Qin and Han dynasties. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ONLY-LINDA-R...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item53df852c01
