Palm-sized animals folded from single willow twigs, cached in Grand Canyon caves around 4,000 years ago.
Documented
Late Archaic hunting magic
Over 400 specimens from about 30 sites, dated roughly 2900 to 1250 BCE, split into Grand Canyon and Green River styles. Many were found pierced with tiny spears or placed under rock cairns, the standard reading being sympathetic magic to secure the hunt.
Assessment: Documented: radiocarbon dates and cache contexts; the magic interpretation is inference from arrangement.
Stories
The vanished people's message
Popular accounts wrap the figurines in the disappearance of their makers, a people who left folded deer in the dark and then left entirely, as if the objects were meant to be found.
Assessment: Stories: the makers did not vanish; Late Archaic lifeways shifted, and the romance fills the gap.
Interesting claims
A map of the inner animal
A speculative reading: each figurine is a single continuous strip folded into a creature, which some see as a meditation on continuity, one material becoming many beings, the hunter becoming the hunted.
Assessment: Interesting: elegant, but nothing in the cache record asks for this much metaphysics.
Sources and further reading
Euler, Robert C., 'The Canyon Dwellers,' The American West (1967)
National Park Service, Grand Canyon split-twig figurine collection records
Janetski, Joel C., 'A Trip Down the Artifacts Trail: Split-Twig Figurines,' Utah Archaeology (2013)
Worth asking
Were they offerings, toys, or the whole economy of hope in a dry land?