10<sup>th</sup> International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: a view from Russia
The International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE) was fist organized in 1998. Since then this scholarly forum has beev carries our every two years in different European countries. The initiator and permanent chairman of the ICAANE Academic Committee is professor P. Matthiae (Roma, Università La Sapienza). The present paper provides an overview of the tenth ICAANE, which hosted eight sessions, 28 seminars and several groups of poster presentations. The congress was held on the premises of the Austrian Academy of Sciences under the patronage of the President of the Republic of Austria, and was attended by more than 8000 participants from different countries. At all variety of subjects, approaches and research methodologies, it is possible to distinguish two fundamental threads which ran through the work of the Congress. The first one is collecting, systematizing and analyzing of large amounts of data; the second deals with preservation and protection of the Near Eastern archaeological heritage.