archaeologist
Americannoun
-
archaeologists
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of archaeologist
Explanation
An archaeologist is a scientist who studies human history by digging up human remains and artifacts. Lucy, the oldest human known to man — nearly 3.2 million years old — was dug up in Ethiopia by archaeologist. We know about the history of the human species thanks to archaeologists who spend countless hours sifting through dirt and digging through ruins to find evidence of human life from across time. The word archaeologist can also be spelled archeologist. It comes from the Greek root archaeo-, for "ancient, primitive."
Vocabulary lists containing archaeologist
Play by the Rules: Arch
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Occupations
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The Origins of Civilization, Lessons 1–2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
During the 1950s, excavations led by archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered the remains of ten Neanderthals.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 31, 2026
"Possibly by many monks' feet, and to push it a bit further, maybe King James's feet had been across it," said the archaeologist.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
Leon Popek, an archaeologist with Poland’s Institute of National Memory that oversees the digs, said only 850 Polish victims have been found so far—perhaps 1% of the total killed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
Sudan is hardly the first war-ravaged Middle Eastern nation to have its heritage stolen and sold, said Amr Al-Azm, a Syrian archaeologist and co-director of the Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research Project.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
Thirty years after his initial excavation, Willey revisited Aspero with Michael E. Moseley, an archaeologist now at the University of Florida.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
What worries one of the archaeologists in the documentary and causes him to lose sleep is how similar our world is to that one.
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2026
For decades, archaeologists have disagreed about what happened to the people living near the eruption.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2026
Instead, archaeologists analysed the shape of the amphorae.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
Excavation by archaeologists further revealed an ancient stone cairn.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
In particular, archaeologists often cite considerably older claimed dates for domesticated plants at Coxcatlan Cave in Mexico, at Guitarrero Cave in Peru, and at some other American sites than the dates given in the table.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
