George Anastasiou

George Anastasiou was with Porphyrios Dikaios in February 1934 when the Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia was first noticed from the Nicosia-Limassol road and combed ware was found there². An attendant at the Cyprus Museum, he is listed in the preface to the first volume of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition as "Jorkos Anastasiou", one of four museum attendants who served as foremen between 1927 and 1931⁶. Stanley-Price thinks he was presumably the "George, one of the workmen from the Museum" who went with Rupert Gunnis to dig at Polis in 1927. A statement of 1936 against Gunnis, quoted by Stanley-Price, says that in 1929 Gunnis took the then Chief Attendant, George Anastasiou, with one or two policemen to open a tomb at night near the Swedish dig, and that the writer understood Gunnis to have given the attendant 10 pounds for payment of labourers⁴.

In 1931 and 1932 Dikaios used him as foreman and often as expert digger at Vounous-Bellapais¹. John Hilton appointed him one of five assistants at the museum on 1 January 1935⁵. Dikaios calls him his faithful companion in the search for prehistoric sites and in the discovery and excavation of Khirokitia, and says his experience of digging was a great asset². With Dikaios he first reported Kalavasos-Tenta in 1940⁷.

In 1947 he was foreman at the start of Dikaios's excavation at Sotira-Teppes and later reconstructed many of its vases. Dikaios's volume of 1961 refers to him as "the late Mr. George Anastasiou"³.