excavation
Americannoun
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a hole or cavity made by excavating.
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the act of excavating.
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an area in which excavating has been done or is in progress, as an archaeological site.
Synonym Usage
See hole.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of excavation
First recorded in 1605–15; from Latin excavātiōn- (stem of excavātiō ) “a hollowing.” See excavate, -ion
Explanation
Excavation is the act or process of digging, especially when something specific is being removed from the ground. Archaeologists use excavation to find artifacts and fossils. There are many types of excavation, but they all involve digging holes in the earth. Mining for coal, gold, or diamonds all require excavation, and before buildings and houses can be built, there is often some excavation that's done before a foundation can be poured. The Latin source of excavation is excavationem, "a hollowing out," from excavare, "to hollow out," with its roots of ex-, "out," and cavare, "to hollow."
Vocabulary lists containing excavation
The Alchemist
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Written in Bone
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Island of the Blue Dolphins
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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:
The Saint Simeon monastery itself was subjected to "looting, illegal excavation, military use and neglect", according to site director Abdel Jalil Arabi.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
The excavation team camped out for five months each year to cover all the ground needed to recover every piece, which ended up being about 7,000 square feet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
On the day Al-Zaharnah monitored the excavation, the crews were working at a painfully slow pace, peeling back the pancaked layers of the building one by one.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
Even after nearly seven decades of continuous excavation, researchers say Sardis still has much more to reveal.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 25, 2026
Nor was there a single piece of any type of marine excavation equipment in the entire nation or surrounding countries.
From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler
Near the base of a column atop which Saint Simeon Stylites once perched, scattered stones lay bare the damage inflicted on the surrounding Byzantine monastery in northern Syria by war, looting and rampant illegal excavations.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
During excavations conducted between November and December 2025, a team led by Núria Castellano uncovered a Roman-era mummy in Tomb 65 of Sector 22.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
Beginning in the 1880s, he funded Hebrew schools there, as well as agricultural settlements and archaeological excavations meant to reconnect Jews to the soil and the ancient Hebrew civilization buried beneath it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
A recent satellite image shows the extent of the excavations for the underground section, which the president has said will be three-storeys deep.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
Accounts of excavations appear almost daily on TV and on the front page of Japan’s largest newspapers.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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.
