Posted 9 years ago
tealeef
(1 item)
There is no information available for this item. It's a small jade foo dog figurine 1" W x 1 3/4" H and L. This object was dug up around 2001 in Omaha NE. The location was the old Sprint phone company utilities building around 72nd st and Crown Point area. It was found during a irrigation pipe excavation in what would had guessed to be development fill dirt. There is no explanation to it's discovered location. The location was somewhat in close approximity to historic landmark wagon trail sites. This is what is peculiar about this object. I really wish I knew how it got there? When heavier rocks fall to the surface they sink and settle into the ground over time. With this object dug up at a little over 2 ft it makes me wonder just when it was dropped. In that type of soil it would take a hundred years or more to settle to that depth. The building was on high ground and up hill from the main road. This figure was buried along the entrance road in the middle of the property. Building or road construction would have been out of the way. The item was extremely damaged and destroyed by the novice laborer excavating the pipes. It's a disasterous shame really. A seasoned profesional with an eye and a sense of touch more keenly developed would have discovered it with more finess, and less destructive force. The worker was stabbing at it with his shovel like a pickax. He cut off the front right leg, and chipped off the rear left thigh. He thought it was a rock at first. I looked over at him and he was holding something up to his face with a slightly confused look. The man himself was truly a destructive force of nature that a book could be written about, so when he told me to come take at look at what he found, I did. I took it from him immediately. There's no way this treasure would have survived his grasp.
This truly is an unsolved mystery, and I'm grateful to find the open forum here to discuss what this could be. It appears to be hand carved using small tools with crude non uniform design elements. Maybe the crafter was developing skills on this work?