#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

Opening of the exhibition "The Famine of 1946–1947. History and Memory in Gagauzia"

April 7, 2026

On April 7, 2026, the National Museum of History of Moldova hosted the opening of the photo-documentary exhibition "The Famine of 1946-1947. History and Memory in Gagauzia", dedicated to one of the most tragic pages in the history of the totalitarian-communist regime. The exhibition approach brought to the attention of the larger public documents, photographs, testimonies regarding the causes and consequences of the famine of 1946-1947 in the south of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, contributing to a better understanding of this scourge in Gagauz communities.

The event brought together historians, researchers, museologists, representatives of civil societies, as well as descendants of families directly affected by famine, creating an interdisciplinary platform for reflection on traumatic memory. The exhibition is part of a wider series of commemorative actions at the national level, dedicated to honoring the memory of the over 200,000 victims of the famine in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, emphasizing the need to condemn these policies as a form of repression and crimes against humanity.

During the inauguration, Dr. Anatol Țăranu, one of the first historians who systematically approach the phenomenon of famine based on archival documents, contextualized the tragedy from a comparative perspective, highlighting the disproportionate nature of mortality in Bessarabia in relation to other regions of the Soviet Union. According to him, although the drought and post-war destruction affected the entire Soviet space, the mortality rate in Bessarabia reached approximately 10% of the population, compared to 0.45% in Russia, demonstrating the use of famine as a deliberate instrument of social control and repression of the population.

The president of the Association of Former Deportees and Political Prisoners, Alexandru Postica, emphasized the persistence in the collective psyche of the collective traumas generated by the famine of 1946-1947 and advocated for the adoption of a parliamentary decision that would officially recognize and recognize the famine as the legal formation of victims and the legal underpinnings of political perpetrators.

The founder of the History Museum of the village of Avdarma, Ignat Cazmalî, presented the results of documentary investigations carried out at the community level, revealing the mechanisms by which forced collectivization and refusal to submit to state policies were sanctioned by food deprivation. The conclusions of the research indicate that the famine was not an accidental phenomenon, but a direct consequence of the functioning of the Soviet totalitarian system.

In turn, Olga Trandafilova, director of the History Museum of the village of Avdarma, highlighted the methodological difficulties and ethical responsibility involved in approaching such a sensitive subject, emphasizing the role of museum institutions in promoting freedom of expression, critical historical research and memory education in a democratic state.

The exhibition is open to the public until April 30, 2026, and can be visited in the exhibition space on the first floor of the National Museum of History of Moldova (31 August 1989, no. 121A).

The exhibition project "The Famine of 1946-1947. History and Memory in Gagauzia" was carried out by the History Museum of the village of Avdarma in partnership with the National Museum of History of Moldova, with the support of the National Program "Access to Culture 2025" of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova.