archaeologist
Americannoun
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:
John Bolton, an archaeologist, was visiting the 11th Century Pembroke Castle in 2010 when he heard there was a cave beneath it.
From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026
Stables is entirely self-taught as an archaeologist and began excavating the site out of a personal fascination with the village's prehistoric past.
From Science Daily ● May 20, 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
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
However, the Richard III Society and University of Leicester archaeologists decided to investigate suggestions the king had actually been buried in the former Greyfriars friary in the city.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
The Lydian era remains especially significant to archaeologists and historians.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 25, 2026
High in the eastern Pyrenees, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that could transform our understanding of how prehistoric people used mountain landscapes.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 3, 2026
Young’s team, the so-called Greek Desk, was comprised of fellow Ivy League archaeologists and Greek-American commandos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 31, 2026
Wari emissaries arrived in Moquegua around 600 a.d., according to Patrick Ryan Williams and Donna V Nash, Field Museum archaeologists who have been working there since the early 1990s.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions 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.
