#Exhibit of the Month

The ceramic vessel set was discovered accidentally in October 2025 in the southwestern part of the village of Bălceana, Hâncești District, approximately 1.2 km from the Lăpușnița River. The archaeological materials were recovered by the National Archaeological Agency.

The ceramic assemblage consists of a large storage vessel (pithos) with a capacity of 20 litres (h = 39.2 cm; d = 35.0 cm), decorated with a raised band below the rim; a medium-sized bowl with a capacity of 2.5 litres (h = 16.9 cm; d = 23.2 cm); a medium-sized jug with a capacity of 0.6 litres (h = 12.0 cm; d = 13.4 cm); and the base of a jar-shaped vessel.

The coarse handmade pottery was produced using the coil-building technique, by stacking and shaping coils of clay prepared from a paste tempered with crushed fired clay (grog) and sand. The vessel surfaces are uneven and covered with a yellowish-red slip featuring black patches, while the core of the vessel walls is black in colour.

The three vessels preserved intact display well-defined biconical shapes, with their maximum diameter at the middle of the body and straight or slightly oblique rims with rounded edges. Pottery of this type is characteristic of the Early Medieval cultural area of the northern and northwestern Black Sea region, dating from the 5th to the 7th centuries. East of the Dniester River, on the territory of present-day Ukraine, analogous pottery is found in Penkovka-type settlements, while in the Carpathian-Dniester region it is characteristic of settlements belonging to the Costișa-Botoșana-Hansca cultural group.

Within the Prut-Dniester region, coarse biconical pottery is generally represented by fragments and only relatively rarely by complete vessels, such as those discovered at Hansca, Dănceni, Recea, Seliște, Păhărniceni, and other sites. This type of pottery constituted an indispensable component of the local material culture during the 5th-7th centuries. In this context, the discovery at Bălceana of an almost intact set of coarse biconical vessels represents a relatively rare find of considerable scientific importance.

According to certain hypotheses, the tradition of coarse biconical pottery dating to the 5th-7th centuries originated in the North Pontic region. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that these biconical ceramic vessels were the result of contemporary ethnocultural interactions, developing simultaneously across the vast territory extending from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dnieper River and the Seversky Donets.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“Childhood in the Gulag”

The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Lithuania

May 10-20, 2023

On May 10, 2023, at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius, Lithuania took place the opening ceremony of the photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag". The exhibition presents images about the life of Bessarabian children condemned by the totalitarian-communist regime of the Moldavian SSR to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination, forced removal from their families, during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953.

At the opening of the event, the ambassador of the Republic of Moldova in the Republic of Lithuania, H.E. Emil Druc, greeted the guests and thanked the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania for presenting the thematic exhibition of resonance for the common history of our countries. The curator of the exhibition, dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru, mentioned the actuality of the recovering, documentation and historical investigation of the testimonies shared by the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime during the USSR. The General Director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, dr. Arunas Bubnys, referred to the achieved remarkable results in the framework of bilateral cooperation, expressing his certainty in the successful implementation of future inter-institutional projects. In this context, the signing of the Cooperation Agreement between the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania and the National Museum of History of Moldova took place. At the event, the President of the Association of Romanian Language and Culture "Dacia" in Lithuania, Mrs. Lucia Bartkiene, spoke, who referred to the pages of history inscribed in the collective memory of the societies of Lithuania and Moldova.

The exhibition 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 in Soroca, the INIS ProMemoria Archive of the MSU, as well as from the archives of the communities memory and of the survivors of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The exhibition held in Vilnius 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 condemn the war launched by the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" can be visited between May 10-20, 2023, at the headquarters of the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights (str. Aukų, no. 2A, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania).