PAPP

The Petroto Archaeological & Palaeoenvironmental Programme (PAPP), part of the Western Thessaly Mycenaean Research Programme, is an interdisciplinary research and excavation project centred on the Bronze Age settlement of Petroto, near Trikala in Thessaly, central Greece.

The site represents the only systematically excavated Bronze Age habitation in the wider region, offering a rare opportunity to investigate settlement organisation, subsistence strategies, and daily life in western Thessaly, an area traditionally regarded as peripheral to the Mycenaean world. The project integrates the detailed study of archaeological artefacts with comprehensive analyses of palaeoenvironmental conditions, aiming to reconstruct human–environment interactions during the second millennium BC.

Excavations have been ongoing since 2011 under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, co-directed by Dr Maria Vaiopoulou, archaeologist and Head of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Karditsa, and Dr Angelos Gkotsinas, archaeologist–zooarchaeologist of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ilia.

Since 2024, PAPP has incorporated an international field school, providing hands-on training in excavation methodology, archaeological sampling strategies, and the analysis of archaeological finds and bioarchaeological remains.