Jean Guilaine

Jean Guilaine directed the French excavation at Parekklisha-Shillourokambos, an aceramic Neolithic settlement near Amathus that Karageorghis credits with moving the start of the Cypriot Neolithic back by a millennium⁴. The site was found by the Amathus survey project directed by Catherine Petit for the French School at Athens⁵. Guilaine excavated it in 1992 and 1993, on about four hectares, and found two aceramic phases followed by a ceramic phase of the Sotira Culture, with much obsidian¹. Work went on under the administrative responsibility of the School³.

Steel's review of 1997-98 dates the occupation from the ninth to the early seventh millennium and reports a palisade, a triangular structure of 19 by 8 m, and the introduction of livestock². Guilaine appears as author or co-author of the team's reports on the obsidian, with F. Briois and B. Gratuze in 1997¹³, on the early cattle, sheep, goat and pig with Jean-Denis Vigne and others in 2000¹⁴, and on the early taming of the cat in 2004¹².

Born at Carcassonne in 1936, he became a research director at the CNRS and professor at the Collège de France from 1994 to 2007¹⁰. With Alain Le Brun he edited the proceedings of the colloquium on the Neolithic of Cyprus held at Nicosia on 17-19 May 2001, organised by the Department of Antiquities and the French School, published in 2003 as a supplement to the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique¹¹.