After returning to Cyprus he was assigned at the age of 25 to the position of Assistant Curator of the Cyprus Museum (1929–1931) and a year later he started his own excavation work. He became Curator of the Cyprus Museum (1931–1960) and finally Director of the Department of Antiquities (1960–1963) after the independence of Cyprus from Britain. He conducted excavation work at Bellapais-Vounous (1931), in the Neolithic site of Khoirokitia, in the Chalcolithic site of Erimi (1933–1935), the Bronze Age site of Enkomi, as well as Sotira (1934) and Salamis, and identified the Philia culture; his work focused on Prehistoric Cyprus.[3][4] He retired from the Department in 1963 and traveled to the United States where he taught at the University of Princeton and Brandeis University. In 1966 he moved to Heidelberg where he taught at the University of Heidelberg as a professor of Near Eastern archaeology until the end of his life.[5][6][1]
Legacy
In 2015 he was commemorated by a stamp from the Cyprus post.[7]
Dikaios, P. (1934). Les fouilles à Chypre en 1933 et 1934. Comptes-Rendus Des Séances de l Année - Académie Des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 78(3), 276. https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.1934.76530
Dikaios, P. (1935). A hoard of silver Cypriot staters from Larnaca. The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, 15(59), 165–179. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42660930
Dikaios, P. (1936). Recherches sur la civilisation néolithique en Chypre. Comptes-Rendus Des Séances de l Année - Académie Des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 80(3), 218–221. https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.1936.76777