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:
As an archaeologist specializing in desert sites, this was a singular experience.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 26, 2026
As an archaeologist in southern Scandinavia, I studied peat cores for pollen, fallen into nearby wetlands centuries earlier, to understand the nature of the historical plant life and climate of a particular site.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
The supposed remains of Samuel were discovered by Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Moutsopoulos in the 1960s.
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
Angus Wainwright, regional archaeologist for the National Trust's East of England region, said the structure had always intrigued him.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
I went from room to room, examining their contents like an archaeologist.
From "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs
For decades, archaeologists have disagreed about what happened to the people living near the eruption.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2026
A Neanderthal who died 75,000 years ago may have been struck through the chest by a sharpened wooden spear, archaeologists say.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
The archaeologists who found the ship say it was about 10m in length and was a trade vessel carrying cargo across the Mediterranean Sea.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
What archaeologists once regarded primarily as prehistoric glue may also have been a useful substance for protecting wounds, offering another intriguing possibility about the origins of human medical knowledge.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026
More important, anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, and historians who were reassessing the environmental impact of indigenous cultures in North and Central America inevitably turned to the tropical forest.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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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.
