A Study of Turkmen Women's Jewelry Designs (in Connection with Marriage Ritual)

 In northeast Iran, there were people living in an area of Gorgan Plain called the Turkmens. One of their beautiful and orginal arts was to make huge and heavy ornaments, usually made of gold and silver and decorated with red stones which had local deep and ancient beliefs over it.This paper tries to briefly describe the history and popular beliefs of Turkmen people, then to talk about their ornaments that distinguished single women from married and newlywed ones. Also it discusses the meaning and concept of these ornaments. The research is based on analytical descriptive results and the data are collected on the basis of library and documantry method. It shows that these ornaments are a kind of representation of women's families and tribes as a symbol of family, and in another sense the different stages of a woman's life in relation to marriage (e.g.: celibacy, marriage, etc.). All these ornaments’ motifs had a sort of meaning that generally refered to fertility and childbirth, or acted as talismans. They were generally used to ward off evil spirits and evil forces.