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This piece pertains to an ancient culture referred to
both as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex
(BCAM) or as the Oxus Civilisation. The Bactria-
Margiana culture spread across an area encompassing
the modern nations of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Northern Afghanistan. Flourishing
between about 2100 and 1700 BC, it was contemporary
with the European Bronze Age, and was characterised
by monumental architecture, social complexity and
extremely distinctive cultural artefacts that vanish from
the record a few centuries after they first appear.
Pictographs on seals have been argued to indicate an
independently-developed writing system.
It was one of many economic and social entities in the
vicinity, and was a powerful country due to the
exceptional fertility and wealth of its agricultural lands.
This in turn gave rise to a complex and multifaceted
set of societies with specialist craftsmen who produced
luxury materials such as this for the ruling and
aristocratic elites. Trade appears to have been
important, as Bactrian artefacts appear all over the
Persian Gulf as well as in the Iranian Plateau and the
Indus Valley. For this reason, the area was fought over
from deep prehistory until the Mediaeval period, by the
armies of Asia Minor, Greece (Macedonia), India and
the Arab States, amongst others.
- (SF.255)
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