archaeologist

American  

[ahr-kee-ol-uh-jist] / ˌɑr kiˈɒl ə dʒɪst /

Or archeologist

noun

1. a specialist in archaeology, the scientific study of prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, etc.

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Etymology

Origin of archaeologist

archaeolog(y) + -ist

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."

Example Sentences

It follows the narrator and her 12-year-old daughter as they travel to Sicily, visiting the site where the narrator’s grandmother, an archaeologist, worked years before.

From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2026

A more sophisticated version of the Marxist model was developed in the 1930s by V. Gordon Childe, the archaeologist who first named the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 1, 2026

The presence of foreign teams is "crucial", said Aqeel al-Mansrawi, an Iraqi landscape archaeologist.

From Barron's • Mar. 31, 2026

At this point an archaeologist was called, who discovered the skeleton beneath where the altar table had stood 200 years ago.

From BBC • Mar. 25, 2026

But when it did reach out to its south and west, Tiwanaku transformed itself to become what Alan Kolata, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, has called a “predatory state.”

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

Related Words

• paleontologist