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This is the seventh year that the national conference has been held, and was an opportunity for 60 academics from across Russia and Belarus to share the results of their recent work, and their plans for the next year. Participants were treated to seminars and lectures by specialists from leading history and archaeology organisations and institutes including the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology and Institute of the History of Material Culture, the Russian State Archive of Ancient Affairs, and the Belarusian Academy of Sciences' Institute of History. The universities represented included, Bryansk, Vologda, Voronezh, Tambov, the Moscow Higher School of Economics, and BNRU. Our group was led by Professor Andrei Papkov, Dean of the Pedagogical Institute's Philological History Department, and included Dr Vladimir Sarapulkin, from the Russian History and Document Management Department, and Evgeny Shishka, a 4^th year student.

The conference was wide-ranging, with talks and seminars on archaeology and history in medieval towns and in rural districts, handicraft production, and changing methods of fortification during the period in question. There was a special focus on the fortified borders of Muscovy in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Forums like this are valuable ways of sharing the latest methods, and for understanding an increasingly complex field in a sophisticated manner.