PAKISTAN, ISLAMIC, c. 1000-1200 AD, bronze bead

Description

The standing bird was a popular decorative theme from Indus times. In the Islamic period, still happening today, when half of the Muslims don’t believe in artistic representation of animals and people, the same bird motif is popular with those Muslims who do.

Three ways that bronze artifacts were put in the ground for people to find later: people burying the dead with their stuff, people put them in the ground, thinking they’d be back to retrieve it but didn’t, people lost stuff. Since bronze was valuable, people reused it when the thing broke, rather than throw stuff away.

Late in the 7th century the newly Islamized and newly unified Arabs went conquering north, east, and west, arriving in what is now Pakistan a couple of decades into the 8th century. They overlaid Islam on a region with well developed technology but political anarchy.

Over the decades I’ve been selling collectibles my market has been about 97% coins, 2% paper money, 1% everything else.