Featured Old? Fish from where?

About 13" long x 1/2" to 1/4" wide. Not sure of material. Hard but not heavy.

 

Did I stump everyone?

 

Some kind of a fishing lure? Segmented to make it wiggly...?

Each little segment is decorated, so that could mean it was always meant to be a decorative item.

Figuring out what it's made of would probably help figure out what its purpose is. It looks like pottery in the pictures.

 

Some sort of bovine horn?

 

I will photo chip in s few min. It is held together with black string that is fragile and about to break apart.

 

Could that be soapstone? If each segment is hand carved to shape and hand decorated, it sure is done precisely and perfectly. Could that design be tribal?

I was thinking along the lines of a spear fishing decoy. The fisherman would dangle it in the lake or river and let it wiggle in the currents until the big fish came along.

That black thread could have been very strong fishing line decades and decades and decades ago.

Well I'm just blabbing a stream of consciousness here. Truly I'm stumped. Could be a mid-century modern wall hanging for all I know, lol!

 

Similar!

 

Here is another one.

 

Wow a fishing lure. You were correct (and right off the bat) well done! I was thinking some sort of symbolic tribal ornament/thing

 

Very interesting. Thanks for the post

 

It does look like soapstone to me; but it doesn't look like any kind of Inuit object that I am familiar with. Possibly African, and possibly made for tourist/souvenir purposes rather than actual use. The string seems too fragile for fishing, and again, I don't recall seeing any fishing lures like this, from any culture.
I could be wrong, easily; but I never trust online sources for identification; and I'd note that the little circular decorative motifs are strongly associated with African items that have been widely misrepresented on ebay as Eskimo artifacts.
Those circles are very easy to make with a motor tool such as Dremel; less easy with hand tools in the past.

 

Very well could be African and/or souvenir piece I think with a bit of age to it. Thanks for all the input!
The string seems too fragile for fishing, and again, I don't recall seeing any fishing lures like this, from any culture.
I think the piece may have been restrung at some point because the string is really sewing thread and not restrung very well - bunch of loose threads and knots.

 

I'm inclined to think it's not an actual tool for active fishing. A stone fishing attractor just seems very impractical--it'd have to be an enormously fast river to keep stones from sinking to the bottom.

Beyond that, I'm not much help!