#Exhibit of the Month

The 21 beads form part of a bronze hoard found in 2019 within a forested area close to the town of Nisporeni. Alongside the beads, the hoard included numerous bronze ornaments (2 Röschitz-Sanislău-type fibulae, 7 necklaces, 12 rings, 22 tubes, 23 bracelets, and approximately 80 appliqués), one coral bead and a pendant made from a wild animal's tooth. At present, the amber beads are preserved in the collections of the Muzeul Național de Istorie a Moldovei, while the remainder of the hoard is in the possession of a private collector.
The hoard was discovered accidentally in a pit about 50 cm deep. The objects in this hoard are of Western origin, with known parallels in archaeological complexes from Poland, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia, and, to a lesser extent, in Romania. The presence of this bronze hoard on the territory of the Republic of Moldova illustrates the cultural dynamics of the region during the Early Iron Age and a fundamental shift in the vector of cultural influences from east to west.

The amber bead strand comprises 16 whole beads and five fragmentary ones. They have an elongated biconical shape and vary in size. The beads are brown-reddish in color; their lengths range from 1.1 to 3.1 cm, widths from 0.6 to 1.4 cm, thicknesses from 0.6 to 1.1 cm, and the perforation diameter ranges between 0.2 and 0.3 cm.
Amber beads appear in several bronze hoards dated to the Late Bronze Age in the eastern half of Slovakia and in Transdanubian Hungary. Parallels are also known from the Cioclovina Cave in Romania. With the onset of the Iron Age, amber items disappear from the Carpathian Basin for approximately 300 years, reappearing alongside the arrival of Scythian elements.
The bronze hoard discovered at Nisporeni is dated to the HaA2-HaB1-2 interval (1050/1000 - 800/750 B.C.).

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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.