Unknown Æ - Wanwan Kangju, 1st period, regular tamgha, heavy type

Kangju was a major nomadic power in the Syr Darya basin that maintained enough political independence to resist both Parthian pressure from the west and successive steppe confederacies from the east, including the Xiongnu. Its coinage is poorly documented in ancient sources, and the attribution system developed by Shagalov and Kuznetsov remains the primary framework scholars work from. The "Wanwan" designation derives from a Chinese transcription of a tribal or dynastic name, and the chronological range assigned to this first period spans four centuries — a reflection of how little datable archaeological context has been recovered rather than any confidence in the sequence.