The research on the hill of Petrosa di Scalea investigated a site to date known as an archaic hut settlement attributed to an indigenous population of Enotrian culture, unique within the panorama of settlements in southern Italy. In fact, today several necropolis areas, for example Tortora, Palinuro, Rivello, are known for the Enotri, who arrived on the coastal promontories of the Gulf of Policastro from the Agri and Sinni valleys and from the Vallo di Diana. The settlement model for Petrosa di Scalea was reconstructed based on the materials found in the layers of collapse and from the presumed floor surfaces, excavated in spits. The huts could have had a stone footing, walls, like the roof, made of vegetal materials perhaps plastered with clay, and a beaten earth floor. According to P. L. Guzzo’s reconstruction, it was occupied from the early 6th century B.C. and abandoned between 510 and 500 B.C., at the time when Sibari’s commercial empire ended, as also documented in other Enotrian contexts on the Tyrrhenian.

In order to further investigate and complete the results of the old excavations, and acquire new stratigraphic and planimetric data, two new trenches were opened, continuing on from those excavated in 1975.

The intervention began in one of the two trenches opened in the 1970s, the so-called south trench, where Guzzo identified a hut dwelling datable to between the early and late 6th century B.C.. The old trench was widened to the south by about 2 m and to the west by 5 m, revealing a stratigraphic sequence with levels of very compact reddish soil alternating with layers of gravel. Based on the materials recovered, these layers dated to between the second half of the 6th century B.C. and the first decades of the 5th century B.C. (numerous fragments of Bloesch C type kylixes, Ionic-Massaliote amphorae, type B2 Ionic cups, as well as large amounts of table wares, kitchen wares and impasto pottery). Taking into consideration the substantial west-east slope, the layers abutted a wall situated up against a notable change in height in the slope, accentuated by an intervention in the 1970s during the construction of a road leading to the quarry. The structure, 3 m wide in the north section of Guzzo’s excavation, and over 4 m in the south section and about 1 m deep, was constituted by an internal facing of small worked blocks and an internal emplekton formed by compact local Dolomitic limestone, resting on the natural rocky outcrop, while the external facing was only partially visible.

The structure’s, main function was probably for containment, but it must also have enclosed the Petrosa hill on the east side and delimited an Enotrian settlement whose structures were situated on the hill summit, now completely eroded.