Maria SOCRATOUS, received the Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology with excellence and the M.A degree with honors in Archaeology /Archaeobotany from the Università Degli Studi di Siena, Italy in 2003 and 2007 respectively with full scholarship. She is currently a PhD degree student at the Università Degli Studi di Siena, Italy and her PhD thesis is on the 'Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction and Palaeoecological History of Cyprus. She has worked and participated in a lot of archaeological surveys and excavations and she has a strong experience in the field of Archaeobotany.

At present she is working as a trainee in the Laboratory of Applied Ecology of Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, where her main research interests are the past vegetation dynamics and plant-human interactions, based on the study of archaeological plant remains with includes charcoal, fruit and seeds macro-remains analysis and investigation. During the period of 2006-2007 she has developed a database suitable for the management of the archaeobotanical remains and the seed reference collection, for the Università degli studi di Siena's laboratory of archaeobotany where she works as a trainee. As a trainee, for a short period in the Basel University in Switzerland, she did archaeobotanical laboratory work practice based on course on flot sorting of archaeobotanical material, fine flot sorting of archaeobotanical material, cereal and charcoal identification practice, interpreting archaeobotanical assemblages and anthracology.

Earlier, in 2005, in the laboratory of archaeobotany of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, she was occupied with archaeobotanical laboratory work such us sample splitting, sorting of residues, flots of archaeobotanical samples and training in a botanical seed reference collection. She participated in Prehistoric, classical & medieval excavations for the Universities of Siena and Pisa carried out during the period of 2000-2006.