#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.

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#Exhibit of the Month

August 2021

Icon of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin

Russia, 1885, engraver V. Savinkov, tempera on wood

The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos is considered a Great Christian Feast, when the Mother of God, upon her earthly demise, entered into heavenly glory. This feast, constituted with the evolution of the cult of the Virgin, is one of the earliest. The feast originated in Jerusalem, probably in the 4th century, and spread to the West in the 5th-6th centuries. The establishment of this feast strengthened the veneration of the Mother of God, as well as her Dormition, condemning some of the excesses of the cult of the Virgin, especially those associated with the delusions of the Collyridian heretics, who denied the human nature of the Most Holy Theotokos, including her worldly death. Originally celebrated on January 18, the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos from 582 began to be marked on August 15 and was considered "the Easter of the Summer". Emperor Flavius Mauricius (c. 539-602) established that the day of August 15 be celebrated everywhere.

The Holy Gospel is silent about this event, information about the circumstances of the Dormition of the Theotokos and the feast of the Virgin being preserved by popular tradition or related in the apocryphal writings. These sources, which convey the central moments of the event, also mentioned various details, suggesting different interpretations, the iconographic schemes evolving from one period to another. The initial compositions dedicated to the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin were laconic, with a small number of characters, but from the 10th-11th centuries, complex scenes with multiple characters appeared. The iconographic schemes were lined up both horizontally and vertically; in the first, the characters were located either to the left and right of the bier of the Virgin, or in a semicircle, in the second, the characters were depicted in large numbers behind the bier of the Virgin or (and) surrounding Jesus Christ, and the upper part of the icon was loaded with many images and details. Traditionally, the Blessed Virgin was depicted lying on a bier in the middle of a house, with her arms folded to her chest. On either side of her bed are candlesticks with lighted candles. At her feet the Apostle Peter is depicted with a censer, and at her head are the Apostles Paul and John the Theologian, who kisses her. Other apostles gathered around her, except for the Apostle Thomas, who was late. Above, to the left of the bed, Christ is shown in white robes, with a halo, in a shining mandorla or a clypeus, holding a swaddled baby in his arms, symbolizing the soul of the Mother of God.

The theological meaning of this iconographic subject reflects the relationship between death and life, between the limited and the infinite, between the end and the beginning. In the schemes of the icons, these hypostases are symbolized by a horizontal line and a vertical line, personified by the lying body of the Virgin and by the image of the Savior with the baby in His arms.

The iconographic model of the icon presented here resembles the famous icon from the Dormition Church in the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, brought there in 1073, probably from the Church of the Virgin of Blachernae in Constantinople. It is known that on these models, which probably reproduced the composition of the original icon, a silver door was installed or depicted on the left of the bed, which, decorated with a cross in the center, could be confused with a closed Gospel. At the same time, this decorative element on later copies could suggest that the specimen brought to Kiev in the 11th century belonged to the so-called reliquary icons, in which special recesses with silver doors were made for fragments of the relics of saints or their garments.