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Thanks, Blam, for posting these images - even if I can't see them with my browser for some reason. All I get are squares with little red 'x's in them for some reason.

This "amulet" was dug up in the 1960s or 70s by a relative in the back yard of his home in Twin Falls, ID, about a quarter mile from the Snake River. This area was on the route of the Oregon Trail and the region had large American Indian populations and migrations over a long period.

I've done a lot of reading/studying about indigenous populations in the Americas and this object struck me as something unusual. The turban and what appears to be a diadem in its center seem more Asian than Amerind, and the delicate features of the face seem out of place to me. Maybe an expert on the region could identify it in a second or two, but I thought it might be of interest here.

The material (as I recall) was a compact fine-grained stone, maybe even basalt (which is abundant in the area) with some sort of white pigment used to highlight certain areas. It was about two inches long. Unfortunately, the relative in question was just a young kid at the time, digging a cave in his yard, and didn't take note of any scientific features of the find or any associated objects. It must have been found at a fairly shallow depth (although I recall some of the caves I dug at that age were dangerously deep)! I don't know if the thing still exists -- the last time I asked him about it he wasn't sure.

There's probably no relationship with the other items mentioned in this thread. As a matter of interest, this object was found only a few miles from the quarry where the remains of the 10,800 year-old Buhl Woman were discovered in 1989.

Buhl Woman

Found: January 1989, at a gravel quarry near Buhl, Idaho
Age: 10,600 years
Discoverers: Highway workers
Significance: Having been reburied by Shoshone-Bannock tribes in 1991 before thorough study could occur, Buhl Woman underscores scientists' fears of losing access to ancient Paleoindian skeletons.

Dead before she turned 21, this young woman found a final resting place in a gravel bar beside the Snake River, where windblown sand and silt slowly covered her body. Her right cheek lay atop a pressure-flaked, pointed obsidian tool, perhaps made specially as a grave gift.

In life, Buhl Woman ate abundant bison and elk, as well as salmon heading upriver to spawn. Sloping surfaces and heavily worn enamel on her teeth - unusual for someone so young - indicate that her diet included frequent doses of sand or grit, as if her meat had been pounded or stoneground into a jerky.

Lines of interrupted growth on her thigh bone tell of stress from illness or malnutrition during childhood, but she grew to a height of 5'2" and otherwise enjoyed good health. What caused her death remains unknown.