#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

#Exhibit of the Month

January 2022

Marble table leg

The item is the lower part of a leg of a festive table made of white and gray marble. In the upper part, it has a protrusion, similar to a Doric capital, on the horizontal platform of which a square recess is engraved, designed to fix the second part of the leg (upper). The lower part of the leg is made in an anthropomorphic style, and, in our opinion, there are two variants of identifying the depicted character. The first involves the image of the head of the young Heracles (Heracles - Ἡρακλῆς) (beardless), the most favorite hero of antiquity, wearing on his head the skin of the Nemean lion - Λέων της Νεμέας, a vicious monster from Greek mythology who lived in Nemea and was eventually killed by Heracles. The first labor of Heracles, of the twelve set by King Eurystheus (his cousin), was to kill the Nemean lion and bring his skin to the king. It is also known from Greek mythology that the lion of Nemea took the form of a beautiful woman in order to seduce the inhabitants of neighboring villages, who wanted to save the girl from danger. Upon entering the cave, a man saw the woman, who usually pretended to be wounded, and rushed to help her. When he approached her, the woman turned into a lion and killed him. Then the lion devoured the man, giving his bones to Hades - ᾍδης, the god of Hell, who lived in the kingdom of shadows. The second version of the anthropomorphic image interpretation suggests Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia in the second half of the 4th century BC, one of the most famous heroes of the Greek world, who sometimes is depicted as Hercules - wearing a lion's skin. Some researchers consider the custom of wearing the skin of a slain lion a sign of royal power. The word βασιλεύς itself, translated from ancient Greek, means "walking the path of the lion", that is, the king. This title was held by the Greek kings from the Homeric period, and later, starting from the 7th century AD - by the Byzantine emperors.

The item can be dated to the 5th-6th centuries AD, and, possibly, it originates from Asia Minor.

It is kept in the collection of the museum for about 10 years. The gray granite stand does not belong to the original item.

Metric characteristics: height 330 mm; width: 112 mm.