#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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Creative workshop dedicate to family coat of arms

May 13th, 2018

On the occasion of the International Family Day, the Public Relations and Museum Education Department organized a workshop on "My Family's Coat of arms" for parents and children.

The workshop had a theoretical and practical part. In the first part, the workshop coordinator, Natalia Popovici, spoke to the children about heraldry, coat-of-arms, coats and the symbols that make up them, using pictures and illustrations as didactic material.

In the second part, the participants were urged to create a family coat of arms, an emblem to represent them and to tell the other participants something about themselves and their relatives. This stage of work has been differently experienced by each child, the process of selecting symbols as well as their illustration through various techniques is quite representative for their personalities.

At the end of this meeting, each of the participants presented their own coat of arms of the family. The questions and the answers that followed at each intervention were additional opportunities for interaction, mutual knowledge and insight into the elements that distinguish us, but especially those which unite us.

The children were careful about the details and they all managed through their work to go home with a blazon of their own family, designed and made by themselves.

The educational activity "My Family's coat of arms" was organized in collaboration with the Origami Moldova Center.