Carrying on in the same vein as yesterday's posts on early Xianbei objects, I offer today an enchanting mystery, a stag-headed golden ornament discovered in Darhan Muminggan United Banner in southern Inner Mongolia! (Image source: http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2018-09-21/doc-ifxeuwwr6654632.shtml) 1/11

This beautiful piece was one of a pair discovered in 1981 by soldiers doing maintenance work. They struck upon a hoard containing these stag heads and a chain decorated with weapon-shaped small amulets (a tweet for another day!) (Credit: Dawn of a Golden Age Cat) 2/11

The features of the stag are modelled using cells surrounded by rings of granulating, originally set with stones, many of which are missing. Some of them look like turquoise, though for some reason neither the excavation report nor other articles seem to confirm this... 3/11

Because they were found in a hoard, these gold objects are dated variously between the 3rd c. and the 5th c AD. What's certain is that this kind of granulation and inlay were beloved in both Northern Wei jewellery (see these earrings from the Heng'an cemetery in Datong)... 4/11

...as well as in earlier nomadic jewellery. Compare with this lovely set of earrings, with Chinese-cut jade plaques encased in gold, found in the 2nd-1st C BC Xiongnu cemetery at Xigoupan. (Source: Laursen 2011) 5/11

Using chained leaves of cut gold foil to represent lush trees also has a long tradition in nomadic art - like in the crown from Tomb 6 at Tillya Tepe in Afghanistan, dated to the 1st C. BCE-1st C. CE and assumed to have belonged to a shamaness. 6/11

The motif of a stag with antlers sprouting into tree branches and bird heads is also attested widely accross the nomadic world since the late Bronze Age. Compare with the golden head finial from Shenmu in northern Shanxi (source: https://www.natgeomedia.com/travel/article/content-4359.html) 7/11

...and the 4th century BC gilded wooden stags found in the Scythian tombs at Filippovka, in south-eastern Russia... (Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2000/golden-deer/photo-gallery) 8/11

...as well as arguably the most famous examples, the horse headdresses, tattoos and ornaments from the 5th century Scythian kurgans at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. (source: Hermitage https://bit.ly/34jkniF ) 9/11

Referencing a motif with a long history, and a long tradition of gilded ceremonial headdresses, the Darhan stag heads are unlike anything else I've seen in a Xianbei context. And whoof! I've barely scratched the surface of the scholarship on these motifs in this thread. 10/11

But if you want to learn more on medieval East Asian nomadic golden headgear, a good starting point is Sarah Laursen's thesis "Leaves that Sway: Gold Xianbei Cap Ornaments from Northeast China" 11/11 https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/304/