Armine Hayrapetyan is currently a junior researcher and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Department of the Prehistoric Archaeology. Her areas of interest include the archaeology of the Transcaucasus and the Near East in the Early Bronze Age period, and issues of economy and trading relations. From 1998 to 2003, Mrs. Hayrapetyan was a senior laboratory assistant at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. Since December 2003 she has been a junior research fellow at the Institute. In 2002 Mrs. Hayrapetyan attended the "European Summer University 2002", a program of Classical Archaeology of the Mediterranean and the Black sea area organized in Montpellier, France. Since 1994 Mrs. Hayrapetyan has participated in several joint Armenian - American and French - Armenian archaeological expeditions in Armenia. In 2003 she took part in the international German-Georgian expedition of a Late Bronze Age settlement of Udabno, Georgia. In 2002-2003 she conducted fieldwork research funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation at an Early Bronze Age settlement of Gegharot.