Esme Vintage Bracelet
Feel empowered, strong, gorgeous just like Wonder Woman in this exquisite vintage Turkmen bracelet. Hand made of mixed metals with red and blue stones to protect the wearer and cast off the evil eye. Many Turkmen tribes believed jewels to possess magical powers, and this piece looks like it gives just that. The shield like band is intricately engraved and has a metal prod that encloses in the casing.
A semi-nomadic people, the various Turkmen tribes often came into contact with urban population centers in the Middle East and Western Asia. The modern Turkmen people descended in part from the Oghuz Turks of Transoxiana, the western portion of Turkestan, a region that largely corresponds to much of Central Asia as far east as Xinjiang. Oghuz tribes moved westward from the Altay Mountains in the 7th century AD through the Siberian steppes and settled in this region. They also penetrated as far west as the Volga basin and the Balkans. These early Turkmens are believed to have mixed with native Sogdian peoples and lived as pastoral nomads until the Russian invasion of the 19th century.
Before the establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia, it was difficult to identify distinct ethnic groups in the region. Sub-ethnic and supra-ethnic loyalties were more important to people than ethnicity. When asked to identify themselves, most Central Asians would name their kin group, neighborhood, village, religion or the state in which they lived; the idea that a state should exist to serve an ethnic group was unknown.
Most Turkmen were nomads and were not settled in cities and towns until the advent of the Soviet government. This mobile lifestyle precluded identification with anyone outside one's kin group and led to frequent conflicts between different Turkmen tribes. In collaboration with the local nationalists, the Soviet government sought to transform the Turkmen and other “backward” ethnic groups in the USSR into modern socialist nations that based their identity on a fixed territory and a common language.
The Soviet-led standardization of the Turkmen language, education, and projects to promote ethnic Turkmen in the industry, government and higher education had led growing numbers of Turkmen to identify with a larger national Turkmen culture rather than with sub-national, pre-modern forms of identity. Before the Soviet era, a proverb stated that the Turkmen’s home was where his horse happened to stand. After gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Turkmen historians went to great lengths to prove that the Turkmen had inhabited their current territory since time immemorial; some historians even tried to deny the nomadic heritage of the Turkmen.
MEASUREMENTS:
LENGTH: 4"
WIDTH: 2 3/4"