#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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Publications

Library „Tyragetia"

Elena Ploșnița

Museographic Concepts of Historical Profile: Retrospect and Prospect

Series “Biblioteca “Tyragetia” XVII, Chisinau, 2008, 248 p. ISBN 978-9975-80-197-3.

The monograph “Museographic Concepts of Historical Profile: Retrospect and Prospect” is a work on an actual and unstudied subject, the synthesis study of museographic concepts on history which dominated in the history of Moldova from the 19th century to the present.

The structure of the work is determined by the specificity of the subject under research. It consists of Preface; arguments; three chapters (“Archaeology and History in Bessarabian Museographic Concepts”, “Creation and Development of Museography of Historical Profile in Moldavian SSR”, “Role of Cultural Policy and Civil Society in Adoption of New Museographic Concepts in Late 20th – Early 21st Centuries”), which are divided into 10 sections; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index of Museographic Concepts; Index of Museums; Index of Proper Names; abstracts in Romanian, English, and Russian; and List of Abbreviations.

The concepts under consideration were identified and systematized on the basis of materials found in the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova, the Archives of the Historical Monuments Department from Bucharest (Romania), the State Archives of the Russian Federation, in the collections and archives of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova, and the archives of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History (Chisinau). The materials, for the most part, have not previously been investigated.

The studies revealed that each historical period of development of the Moldavian society since the late 19th century gave rise to (and was marked by) certain museographic concepts and, at the same time, these concepts have been a reflection of social and intellectual concerns, the interest in history of the past, the attitude of a collective mentality, an of course, cultural policy in general and museum policy in particular, promoted by government bodies.