From 23-25 June 2005 the State Hermitage was host to an international conference dealing with issues relating to the culture, history and archeology of Archaic Greece. Attention was also devoted to questions of exhibiting ancient Greek monuments in a museum setting.

The basic challenges of studying Archaic Greece were set out in a lecture written by Sir John Boardman (Great Britain), which was read in his absence by Dr Udo Schlotzhauer of the German Archeological Institute. Twenty-two reports were delivered during the conference. They dealt with the following major themes: Archaic art; the Greek polis (forms and rate of development); and colonization (models and evolution, interethnic relations between Greeks and non-Greeks). Within the limits of these topics great attention was directed to the Greek city-states of the Mediterranean Sea region (J.-J. Maffre, France) and Black Sea region (Yu. A. Vinogradov, Russia); to the penetration of Greek culture to the East (Ì.Ì. Dandamaeva, Russi; Ch. Gates, Òurkey) and the West (F. Causey, USA); and to the trade relations of the Greek cities as we know them from archeological and epigraphic data (P. Dupont, France; S.R. Tokhtasiev, Russia).

Two of the conference sessions were devoted to the issues surrounding study of Archaic art in its basic manifestations: paintings on vases (M. Kerschner, Àustria; R. Pozamentir, Germany), sculpture (À.V. Kruglov, Russia), jewelry (D. Williams, Great Britain), bronzes produced by artisan workshops (M. Treister, Germany), glyptic ornaments (Î.Ya. Neverov, Russia) and numismatics (S.À. Êîvalenko). Questions surrounding Greco-barbarian relations in the regions of Greek colonization on the Iberian peninsula, in the South of France and Italy, as well as in the Northern and Western Black Sea Littoral were the subject of reports by J.-P. Morel (France), A. Dominguez (Spain), S.L. Soloviev and A.M. Butyagina (Russia), ànd V. Lungu (Romania). The reports by A.A. Trofimova (Russia) and J. Gaunt (USA) examined historical questions and issues in creating museum exhibitions of Archaic monuments.

The conference provided the context for the opening of the exhibition entitled Borisphen-Berezan. Early Antiquity in the Northern Black Sea Littoral.
The 120th Anniversary of Archeological Excavations on the Island of Berezan. At the end of the scholarly sessions, the conference participants visited the Hermitage's Treasure Gallery as well as the palace and museum complex in Peterhof.

The first volume of the Hermitage's series entitled Borishpen-Berezan: the archeological collection of the State Hermitage was released to coincide with the conference. The conference was made possible by financial support from the Alexander A. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and the British Academy Black Sea Initiative. There are plans to publish the conference materials in English in a special publication.

At the international scholarly conference