#Exhibit of the Month

The metal vessel was likely used as a funerary urn. It was found together with another vessel, shaped like a shell and used as a lid for the urn, in a landslide along the road within the Yahorlyk Nature Reserve, Dubăsari District. The village of Yahorlyk is located at the mouth of the stream of the same name, a left tributary of the Dniester River.
The vessel belongs to the Hemmoo type (or Eggers 63) and is a rare find in the late ancient sites of the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. Researchers consider this type of vessel to be of Italic, Gallo-Italic, or Mediterranean origin, frequently used as a funerary urn or burial inventory by the Bastarnae. Upon discovery, the vessel was reportedly filled with "earth and burnt bones."

The vessel was found together with a brass sheet vessel that had undulated or fluted walls. It has a height of 14.9 cm (without the base ring). The diameter of the vessel's body is 19.5 cm, and the total height is 16.2 cm. The rim of the vessel flares outward with a diameter of 20.5 cm. The vessel is made from thin brass sheet, only 0.1 cm thick. The upper part of the vessel is modestly ornamented. The middle of the rim, on the exterior, has a shallow horizontal line incised. The transition from the rim to the body is marked by a wide groove, 0.3 cm in width. From this groove, the rim thickens to 0.25 cm. On the upper part of the rim, on two symmetrically placed sides, semicircular handles with stepped bases were cut out. The handles are 2.2 cm in height and 5.1 cm in width. Including the "steps" at the base, the handles are 6.1 cm wide. In the middle of each handle, a circular elongated hole was made for the attachment of a handle, measuring 1.2 x 1.5 cm.

The ornamentation on the upper part of the vessel's body consists of two bands, each formed by two parallel incised lines, spaced 0.2 to 0.4 cm apart. The interval between the two bands is 0.9 cm. The vessel's handle is semicircular, mobile, fairly thick, rectangular in cross-section (0.8 x 0.9 cm), and made from a rounded brass bar. The ends of the handle are thinned to 0.6 cm and widened to 0.9 cm over a length of 2.6 cm, resembling bird heads. On the median part of the bar, incised marks resembling Roman numerals IX and XI are present. The bottom of the vessel was made from a separate brass sheet, worked by pressing on a lathe. Evidence of this process is the indentation from the lathe's fixing rod, preserved in the central part of the vessel's bottom. Surrounding this indentation is an ornament consisting of two bands of concentric lines, with diameters of 1.8 cm and 5.9 cm, respectively. The lower part of the vessel is raised and rests on a ringed base, formed by shaping the vessel's walls and bending the piece that formed the actual bottom. This base has a diameter of 8.7 cm.

For the North-West Pontic and East-Carpathian regions, several scattered sites or points where fragments of metal vessels were discovered, used as funerary inventory or urns, should be mentioned. These include discoveries from the funerary complexes of flat necropolises dated to the first centuries AD, at Hansca-Lutăria II and Dănceni-Ialoveni. Here, excavations identified noble graves with fragments of bronze vessels with metal handles, similar to the vessel from Yahorlyk.

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Exhibitions

“Childhood in the Gulag”

Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Resistance Sighetu Marmației, Romania

25 May – 31 August 2023

On May 25, 2023, at the invitation of colleagues from the Civic Academy in Bucharest, Romania the "Childhood in the Gulag" vernissage took place (curator Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru) - an event organized as part of the commemorative activities devoted to "The Memorial Day", at the Memorial to the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance from Sighet.

The exhibition presents photo-documentary images about the life of Bessarabian children condemned by the totalitarian-communist regime of the Moldavian SSR to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination, forced excision from their own families, during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953.

The exhibition approach brings together about 180 photo-documentary images, accompanied by memories and archival documents from the collections of the National History Museum of Moldova, the Edineț County Museum, the Museum of History and Ethnography from Soroca, the INIS ProMemoria Archive of the USM, as well as from the archives of the communities memory and of the survivors of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The opening was inaugurated by the President of the Academia Civică Foundation, Ms. Ana Blandiana, who warmly welcomed the presence of the exhibition within the commemorative events at the Memorial in Sighet and the need to strengthen efforts to disseminate historical knowledge related to the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. The concept of the exhibition was presented by Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru and Dr. Virgiliu Bîrlădeanu, mentioning the actuality of the recovery, documentation and historical valorization of the testimonies of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in Bessarabia.

The inauguration of the photo-documentary opening "Childhood in the Gulag" at the Sighet Memorial is a tribute to the children who went through the atrocities of the totalitarian-communist regime in the USSR, as well as an action to commemorate the victims produced among children in the war started by the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" can be visited between May 25 - August 31, 2023, at the headquarters of the Sighet Museum (str. Corneliu Coposu, no. 4, Sighet town, Maramureş county, Romania).

The Opening of the photo-documentary exhibition „Childhood in the Gulag" was organized within the project „Edification of a European culture of memory by promoting intergenerational communication and cross-border cooperation. Exchange and implementation of the best practices between Lithuania and Moldova", with the support of the „The Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme" of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.