The Mycenaean settlement at Traghanes lies at the west edge of an extensive plateau that stretches from the modern village of Iklaina towards the Ionian Sea (Plate I). The site was tested for the first time by Spyridon Marinatos in 1954, but was left unexplored until the Iklaina Archaeological Project was launched in 1998. The project, conducted under the auspices of the Archaeological Society at Athens, is an interdisciplinary program of research comprising surface survey, scientific analyses, and excavation. The first phase of the project, an intensive survey of the major region around Iklaina with the objective of reconstructing settlement pattern and hierarchy, was carried out between 1999 and 2006.

As the survey was coming to an end, negotiations were concluded for the purchase, on behalf of the Greek government, of a 1.2 ha. plot of land owned by Mr. Demos Kyriako-poulos. This was the plot in which Marinatos had opened his trenches and in which our own archaeological and geophysical survey had shown promising archaeological features. The purchase was made possible thanks to funds provided by the Institute for Aegean Prehistory and the late Captain Vassilis Konstantakopoulos.

A smaller (0.3 ha.) plot that bordered the Kyriakopoulos plot to the East was purchased ten years later, in the summer of 2016. The purchase of this second plot, owned by Mrs. Stavroula Giannopoulou, was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Pylos Archaeology Foundation, and Mr. Thomas Ray Jr. (J.D., C.Arch.) of St. Louis. After this purchase was completed, the dirt road between the two plots was moved further to the East and the two plots were unified into one site protected with a new and expanded metal fence (Plates II, III). -- Preface.