#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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Events Archive

Japanese-style ancestral tradition

2 March 2019

The Mărțișor, celebrated each year in the early days of March, symbolizes the renaissance and the arrival of the spring and makes us feel the energy of a new beginning.

At the National Museum of History of Moldova this event was marked on March 2 by the „Japanese-style ancestral tradition" event organized by the Public Relations Department, Museum Education (coordinator: Natalia Popovici) in collaboration with the Youth Station of the Young Tourists from Chișinău municipality and Origami Center Moldova.

The cultural and educational event has provoked students to engage affectionately and effectively in the making of Japanese-style Mărțișor, to learn customs, traditions and legends related to the feast of the Mărţişor, which reminds us of the important role that small objects have and which were considered true talismans for luck and health.

The event began with a show of music, poetry and dance, followed by a workshop where students were encouraged to make origami Mărțișor. The activity has been a real success: the useful and the pleasure were harmoniously combined, while the creative thinking of participants was stimulated through play, learning and work. At the end of this meeting, dozens of Mărțișor-cranes took their flight, together with their creators, to the dear beings they were destined to...

The handcrafted Mărțișor brought the spring in the museum and gave everyone the feeling of rebirth, of beauty and of love.