Red Mountain would know much more about these than I do, but I don't think I've seen these from the Ordos culture. I'd associate them much more with Afghanistan/Bactria in the first millennium BCE and possibly earlier. But given the enormous distances that nomadic folk travelled, these two cultures may actually have been in fairly close trading contact.

Attached is a Bactrian bone tiger.

Cheers,

Will

Here are a couple of quite nice examples of the kind of objects you are talking about: a lovely little bird pendant, and a knife with a decorative handle. Both are late first millennium BCE. They used to be reasonably priced, but not any longer.

Cheers,

Will

I just took some photos of a few more pieces. First is a bronze harness decoration, with a mask-like human head at each end. Human images on Ordos bronzes are rare, though they seem to be more common on horse harness appliqués than on any items of human jewellery. I'm interested by the way in which the two faces are different - even perhaps ethnically different. It's from the second half of the first millennium BCE, like all of these pieces. It has two suspension/attachment loops on the back which mean it would work very nicely as a pendant too.

Will

W

It's just this kind of slightly crazy animal depiction that was the subject of my master's thesis, long long ago . . . a type of nomadic metalwork in northern & western Asia in the first millennium BC . . . which is why I was burrowing around in the Ordos area, among other northern and western Asian places!

You're lucky to have some examples, Will! My entire personal collection of nomadic metalwork consists of one bronze Scythian arrowhead excavated in Egypt. But I've given up feeling sorry for myself. Took over 30 years, but I'm OK now . . . (whine).

W

Almost as nice as having a door just open in frot of you, which has happened to me more than once on this forum!

Yes, there are occasional human figures, and I'd be happy to see more. I remember a belt plaque of a man apparently being eaten by a tiger. I think there are probably more human representations in the Scythian cultures to the west. I'll attach a well-known one supposedly from the Ordos region that's in the British Museum; I've always had doubts about it and now, I notice, there's a question mark beside it in the museum catalogue.

These representations almost always show men with non-Chinese nomadic features. One of the faces on my harness fitting conforms with that, but the other looks very "oriental," which is definitely unusual; I think it may relate to the way in which this culture looks both ways, towards the nomadic west, but also to the more settled southeast.

Cheers,
Will

the first example is a bone goat? head which I got several years ago in the city Xian shannxi prov. I believe it's from the north part of the province where used to be the border between Han and Hun people.and this piece belongs to the Hun people,so called erdos culture.
you can see the green color and patina on the bone surface
compared with the so called dice beads posted by Lynne
the big difference is the status of the bone itself. you can imagine the differences of bones of the age 2000 years and 100 years.

the second are some outstanding gold pieces of erdos culture from chinese museums. one is the famous crown found in innermogolia in 1960s. the other is a wonderful belt ornament in shape of a horse.
(C.T.Loo had published a book about ancient chinese bronze wares in 1920's most of the collections in his book are from erdos culture)
To me erdos is a culture of metal with very unique and impressive design of its daily uesd objects. the representational way of expression of fierce and temperate animals and designs have strong influence to Han arts and arts of other nomadic peoples like Donghu of the same age and later Xianbei.

the third is my recent acquisition from Ningxia prov. some gold pieces in the shape of cutted shell which I believe they were uesd by Huns as ornaments . this kind of thing started very early even before the time of Hun people and probably uesd as money at the very beginning.
the gold one is very rare and obviously it is the imitation of the real shell one.Both are of the same time.

at last the two beads bronze piece from Will is wonderful
I like it very much.
thanks you all

R.M.