Human presence in the Berbati Valley runs from the Paleolithic through to the Roman Imperial period, though not without gaps. After the Mesolithic sites were abandoned, settlement resumed around 6000 BCE with a large Neolithic community in the valley, followed by an expansion of agricultural sites during the Late and Final Neolithic (roughly 4500–3000 BCE). Evidence from these earlier periods points to sheep and goat herding, cereal farming, and what archaeologists read as a hierarchy between sites — one location appearing more central than the others, perhaps a small proto-village that organized the surrounding settlements. By the Early Helladic period (around 3100–2000 BCE), twenty-one distinct sites are known in the valley. Habitation concentrated on the southern slope of a ridge called Psili Rachi, chosen for practical reasons: it caught more sunlight than the shadier Euboia slopes, offered a clear view of anyone entering through the Klisoura pass, and sat above good agricultural land on the valley floor.

The Bronze Age finds are the most spectacular. On the eastern slope of Mastos Hill, Late Helladic activity centered on what became known as the Potter's Quarter — a commercial production site dating to around 1400 BC (Late Helladic II / IIIA1 in archaeological shorthand). The finds were extraordinary in volume: over 175,000 ceramic sherds recovered from the site, along with the remains of a kiln and two large pottery dumps. The vessels made here were not purely local products. Pottery from Mastos has been identified on Cyprus and in the Levant, showing that the valley's potters were supplying an export market during the height of Mycenaean power. The same hill also contained Mycenaean chamber tombs — rock-cut burial chambers of a type found throughout the Argolid — and a Western Necropolis investigated by the Swedish team in the 1930s.

The modern scientific story of Berbati is a Swedish story. Axel W. Persson, Gösta Säflund, and Erik J. Holmberg first arrived in 1934 to survey the area and identified Mastos Hill as the most promising prospect. Persson and Åke Åkerström returned in 1936 to excavate the eastern slopes and discovered the Potter's Quarter. Säflund focused on the necropolis and in 1937 dug part of an Early Helladic settlement that continued into the Middle Helladic period. Wartime put a stop to the work after 1939; Åkerström resumed excavations on Mastos Hill in 1953 and continued until 1959. A second major campaign, led by Berit Wells, began in the late 1980s. Between 1988 and 1990, Wells's team conducted a surface survey of the surrounding area (excluding the already-excavated Mastos Hill). In 1994, the Berbati Valley Project was formally constituted with a specific research agenda: understanding the agricultural economy of the Bronze Age Argolid and how it was organized at the regional level.

The pattern of settlement in Berbati follows a rhythm familiar in the Argolid: Bronze Age peak, collapse, slow recovery. After the late Mycenaean period — possibly before 1070 BCE — the investigated sites were essentially abandoned, with only scattered finds to suggest any presence at all. Not until around 750 BCE do clear signs of activity reappear, and these are modest at first, growing through the Late Archaic period (roughly 525–480 BCE) as population expanded across the region. The valley's population reached a local peak during the late fourth century BCE, with agriculture again the dominant activity. By the second century BCE, settlement was declining, and the Roman Imperial period saw further contraction as people moved to cities and the land was increasingly worked by enslaved laborers brought in from outside the region. The valley that had once exported Mycenaean pottery to the eastern Mediterranean was, by then, just another agricultural hinterland of a provincial Roman town.