#Exhibit of the Month

Christmas bells entered the Romanian cultural space through a long process in which archaic traditions blended with Christian belief and European influences. Long before the holiday of Christmas developed as we know it, metallic sounds played an important ritual role in old communities: they were used to drive away evil spirits, to purify spaces, and to protect people during transitional moments at the turn of the year. These beliefs have been preserved in winter customs such as caroling, the Plugușor, and masked dances, where bells and jingles were indispensable.
With the spread of Christianity, the sound of the bell also acquired a profound religious meaning, becoming an announcer of major feasts and a symbol of the Nativity. Small bells, however, were not originally used as decorations but primarily as functional or ritual objects.
The first decorated Christmas tree in the Romanian lands was the one at the palace of Prince Carol I of Hohenzollern, following his arrival in the Romanian Principalities in 1866. From that moment the tradition took root, and on Christmas Eve princes and princesses invited to the palace would take part in decorating the tree. Among the ornaments used were small metal bells, symbolizing joy, the good news, and divine protection for the home.
In the twentieth century, Christmas bells spread across all Romanian provinces and became a visual emblem of the holiday, appearing in both decorations and carols. Even during periods when religious expression was curtailed, bells remained in people's homes as signs of joy and the continuity of tradition. Today they retain this dual meaning: the echo of ancient beliefs and, at the same time, the announcement of the Birth of Christ - a symbol of hope, light, and the link between past and present.
These tinkling pieces are part of a generous heritage collection at the National Museum of History of Moldova (NMHM), which includes more than 200 cultural items. A substantial contribution to the museum's collection of decorative bells was made by Dorina Raischi, a teacher at School No. 94 in Chișinău, who donated 174 bells, of which around 30 are winter-themed. Made of ceramic, porcelain, glass, and metal, they were brought from different parts of the world and together offer a succinct picture of the global culture of bells. They add a festive note to the home and even to a gift, and it is hard to imagine Christmas without their cheerful tinkling.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“ArheOS
- when anthropologist and archaeologists make bones to speak”

June 13 - November 10, 2019

"Archeology is anthropology or nothing" used to say the famous American archaeologists Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, thus theorizing a course of research in archeology that, although understood by many, was practiced by very few. The two set the objectives of archaeological research as studying and solving human, cultural and social problems, and anthropology became a tool of obtaining that information and knowledge.

In complex archaeological research, absolutely all recovered fragments are important, whether they represent the results of human activity - artifacts (ceramics, clothing and ornaments, tools made of different materials, weapons, etc.) or osteological material itself. Their interdisciplinary research provides additional data to help complete the daily picture and work of the past.

This exhibition, which brings together archeological artifacts of particular importance, through the sum of their knowledge and osteological materials of special significance, represents a "bridge" through which today's archaeologists and anthropologists "speak" with our predecessors. By analyzing them, we can now know what physical activity they have had, why diseases have suffered and how they have tried to treat some, what were the conditions they lived and what they fed, what rituals they practiced and what has remained behind them. Their histories are fascinating, and their secrets are revealed.

The narrative behind this exhibition was born in the context of extensive research on the human skeleton in recent years, which has often become an avoided subject in different societies. Viewed and accepted differently, often with negative connotations, the skeleton represents for researchers a valuable source of information. Treated and interpreted with great care for all the details, it helps to reconstitute scenes and aspects of the lives of long gone human communities.

The exhibition presents, in chronological order, funerary complexes from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages, associated with the inventory of graves, sometimes richer, sometimes more austere, defining and representative for the periods concerned. The most spectacular cases recorded by archaeological and anthropological science are highlighted: skulls with intentional ritual deformations, skulls with traces of "surgical" interventions, bones with traces of pathologies or traumas, are the messengers through which we are now closer to the life, activity, spirituality and beliefs of the past.

The concern for the body manifested more or less by man, has left legible traces in our bone matrix since old times. Whether it took the form of aesthetic care, whether it was in the curative field, all the actions to which the skeleton was subjected left its mark on the surface or in the structure of the bones.

Communicating with the people of the past becomes even more interesting the more unusual are the stories that are hidden in their bones.

The exhibition project „ArheOS: when anthropologists and archaeologists make bones to speak" is the achievement of an extraordinary team, it is the cumulative effort of some major and important research institutions: National Museum of History of Moldova and the Anthropological Research Center „Olga Necrasov", the Romanian Academy - Iaşi Branch, Romania.

Curators: drd. Mariana Vasilache-Curoșu (Chișinău) and dr. Angela Simalcsik (Iași).