#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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Exhibitions

“Guardians of age-old borders”

70 years since the beginning of systematic research of medieval settlements on the Dniester

September 9, 2020 - January 4, 2021

2020 marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of systematic archaeological research of the early medieval fortified settlements between the Răut and the Dniester. The investigations carried out in the sites of Echimăuți, Alcedar, Lucășeuca, Țareuca, Rudi - Farfuria Turcească, Poiana-Cunicea, Tătărăuca Nouă-Germănărie and others made it possible to reconstruct the historical and archaeological realities of the 9th-11th centuries AD. It was discovered that these complex strategic systems, consisting of a ditch, a rampart made of earth and wood, endowed with strong palisades, were built in the context of imminent threat from the outside and that they could be built by strong, well-cohesive political structures at the regional level.

The exhibition shows some of the discoveries in the northeast of the Prut-Dniester territory, represented by fortified round settlements built a fundamentis, "long houses", iron melting furnaces, craft workshops for making tools and weapons of iron, bone and horn or for the manufacture of silverware, burial mounds with cremation graves, hoards of tools and weapons, battle axes, hoards of silver objects containing Islamic and Byzantine coins, silver ingots, Scandinavian pendants with animalistic ornaments, including that of Gnezdovo type, iron weights in bronze foil, balance scale, miniature iron or bronze axes, amber beads, and so on. Some of these materials are presented in the basic exhibition or in the museum exhibition Treasury, others are kept in the collections of some museums in the Republic of Moldova or abroad.

The appearance, during this period, of defensive systems in the area between the rivers of Răut and Dniester, as well as in northern Bukovina, was associated with the penetration of Scandinavians into the region, who followed on the old trade route from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, to the Balkans, to Byzantium, Constantinople or Baghdad, along the Vistula and Dniester rivers, also called "the second trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks". The fortified settlements were places of rest for merchants or intermediate military camps, which over time became prosperous military, administrative, craft and trade centers, real medieval proto-cities, to the construction of which the local Romanian population contributed. Apparently, they were destroyed by the invasion of the Turanian nomads at the end of the 11th century.

The archaeological artifacts that form the basis of the exhibition are originals and only some of them have been subjected to restoration and conservation. Several battle axes are part of Mr. Victor Borshevich's private collection. The exhibition is complemented by a model of the fortified settlement from Echimăuți, made in the 1960s, several reconstructions of tools and weapons, and various and images that illustrate the subject matter.

The exhibition, through the artifacts displayed, contributes to the increase of the educational and cultural potential of the museum activities, to the promotion of the values of national heritage in the international context.

Curator: Ion Tentiuc, PhD