Survey and Excavation

PaGE aims to fill the paleoanthropological research gap of the Southern Balkans through high risk fieldwork in Greece, conducted in close collaboration with the Ephoreia for Paleoanthropology and Speleology of Southern Greece (EPS-SG), the Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The PaGE proximate goal is to systematically explore target areas, to identify new paleoanthropological / paleolithic sites and to increase the number of hominin and paleolithic findings from Greece, focusing on in situ recovery from secure, stratified contexts. Its ultimate goal is to help document the earliest human dispersals into Europe, the timing of the Neanderthal extinction, the earliest migration of modern humans in the continent and the likely interactions between the two species.

Since 2012, the PaGE team with our Greek collaborating partners have conducted surveys and test excavations. At the Megalopolis basin, survey conducted with the EPS-SG located the site Marathousa 1, an open‐air site situated at what would have been the beach of a paleolake (Megalopolis). Since 2013, the PaGE team, working in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, has undertaken paleontological survey in the fossil rich Pleistocene sediments of Mygdonia, Northern Greece, where several new sites were discovered.