#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

The compartment of World War II and Stalinist repression

(Permanent Exhibition „History and Civilization”)

The department presents documentary evidences about World War II and political repression during the Stalinist dictatorship.

Numerous photos, documents, military clothing items, letters from the front, personal belongings of soldiers recreate the ordeal of war, which caused millions of deaths and immeasurable economic losses.

The compartment of World War II and Stalinist repression

Among the relics presented in the showcases you can see a photograph of the commander of the 12th gendarme regiment G. Niculescu, who was the first Romanian colonel fallen in the battles of Tiganca on July 9, 1941; letters from the front written by E. Filatov, soldier in the Romanian army, to his wife; military ID that belonged to V. Sava, a native of the village of Bardar, Lapusna District; photograph and flying helmet of S. Harhalup who’s aircraft was shot down on 30 June 1941 during a fight over his native village of Valea Adanca, Camenca District; sailor’s shirt of I. Caimacan and shoulder straps of Colonel L. Grecu, who participated in the war in the ranks of Soviet troops and navy.

A number of exhibits remind of the horrible concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 4 million people, representatives of 27 nationalities, were killed Nearby you can see the clothes of a prisoner of the Soviet forced labor camps and a certificate on the name of Vasile Cojocaru, a former political prisoner, as well as a certificate stating that Peter Cojocaru was shot in 1942 at the camp in Mariinsk, Kemerovo Region.

Such a fate befell tens of thousands of Bessarabians who were in the Soviet Gulag. During the 11 years, from 1940 to 1951, the MSSR there were carried out three large-scale deportations and dozens of arrests and deportations at the local level. In June 1941 there were deported 3470 families of "anti-Soviet elements" (22 848 persons). On the night of 5 to 6 July 1949, 11 293 families (over 35 thousand people) of hardworking peasants were forcibly sent to the suffering and death in Siberia and other remote areas of the Soviet empire. In 1951, as a result of the operation "North", 723 families of Jehovah‘s Witnesses (over 2,600 people) have been forcibly relocated.

The exhibition includes photographs, letters from the camps, lists of confiscated property, personal belongings of the deported, and other documentary evidence about the fate of people who have experienced the deportation ordeal, such as poet Nicolae Turcan, scientist Alexei Barladeanu, teacher Catherine Dementieva, the Buiuc family from Chiperceni (Orhei District), the Baciu family from Mereni (Anenii Noi District), the Berezovschi family from Chisinau, Xenia Botnaru from Straseni, Alexandra and Gregory Scafaru from Ciuciuleni (Nisporeni District), and many others.