This carved bone fragment belongs to the category of spatula-shaped objects that is well represented in finds from royal burials at Xibeigang, Anyang of Late Shang times. This spatula type and decor is mimicked in excavated examples from the royal burial M1004 at Xibeigang, Shi Zhangru, Houjiazhuang: vol. 5 HPKM 1004, Nangang, Taiwan, 1970, pl. XCIV-XCIX. A smaller, but also excavated bone spatula type, is represented in excavated finds from the Fu Hao burial at Anyang, see Yinxu Fu Hao mu, n.d., Beijing, pl. 179:1, center two. The preserved Sackler piece most likely derives from a royal burial at Anyang

Compare, also, the bone spatula fragments with very similar decoration in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, included in Mostra D'Arte Cinese, Venice, 1954, no. 177; one in the collection of Osvald Siren illustrated in Ars Asiatica, VII, Documents d'Art Chinois, Paris and Brussels, 1925, pl. XXVIII:272; and another with carved decoration similar to that on the reverse of the Sackler fragment illustrated in Sammlung Baron Eduard von der Heydt, Wien, 1936, no. 118