On 3-4 April 2006 the regular Archeological Session was held during which the heads of the museum's archeological expeditions spoke about the work which was carried out during the 2005 season.

Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky delivered introductory remarks during which he commented on the importance of the work of the archeological expeditions and talked about the status of museum-directed archeology in the present day. Nowadays we are passing through a period when the museum has to fight for the existence of the archeological expeditions and we have to carefully determine once again the direction of activity of Hermitage archeologists. One direction is the further strengthening of ties with foreign scholars and work of expeditions abroad. In the matter of managing the work of archeologists, a large role has been given to the recently created Archeological Commission of the State Hermitage.

In all 18 reports were heard during the conference and they provided a detailed account of the work of all the Hermitage's expeditions and of their separate detachments. During the year the museum's archeologists worked in Russia, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. New sites for investigation were uncovered by the Southern Siberian Archeological Expedition on the territory of the Altai. Changes in sites for investigation were made by the Old Russian expedition, which worked during this season in Yuriev Polsky, Alekandrova Sloboda and the little settlement of Abaturovo. Special mention should be made of the joint excavations of the Multi-disciplinary Archeological Expedition into sites from Antiquity and the German Archeological Institute at the Ancient Greek city of Mileet on the territory of Turkey.

During the course of the session's work, numerous forms of excavations and the photographs of finds by Hermitage archeologists were shown off.

There are plans to publish the results of work by the Hermitage expeditions during 2005 in a new issue of the Report of the State Hermitage's Archeological Commission.