Prehistoric Thorikos (Lavrion, Greece). The archaeology of one of the oldest and most prominent Mediterranean mining and metallurgical communities.

Prof. Dr. Robert Laffineur is Emeritus Professor of the University of Liège (Belgium). After his PhD in Greek Archaeology and Art History at the University of Liège (1975), he has been a foreign member of the French Archaeological School at Athens (1976-1978) and then assistant (1979), Chargé de cours (1980-1990), Professeur (1990-2000) and Professeur ordinaire (2000-2010) in Liège. He has been teaching also at the University of Iasi, Romania (Erasmus exchange, 2003), at the Université catholique de Louvain (tenure of the Francqui Chair in 2006-2007), and as Visiting Professor of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (Australia, 2010). He has been working in excavations and surveys in Greece, Crete and Cyprus (Amathus), and is director of the Belgian excavations in the Mycenaean sector at Thorikos (Attica) since 2005. His research activities focus on Mycenaean productions, especially from the Shaft Grave period, and on metalwork, especially jewellery, of Bronze Age and early Greek times, as well as of Cypriote gold and silver productions. He is the founder and now co-organizer of the International Aegean conferences/Rencontres égéennes internationales, every two years since 1986, and editor of the periodical Aegaeum. Annales liégeoises d’archéologie égéenne (42 volumes since 1987). He has been appointed as Honorary Consul of the Hellenic Republic in Liège in 2014.