archeologist

IPA/ˌɑːkiˈɒlədʒɪst/
IPA/ˌɑːrkiˈɑːlədʒɪst/

archeologist — noun

1. a scientist who digs up and studies old buildings, tools, bones, and other objec

1.nounB1
Definition

a scientist who digs up and studies old buildings, tools, bones, and other objects left by people from the distant past, in order to understand how they lived

Example

Dr. Amani, the lead archeologist, discovered a 2,000-year-old tomb near the Nile river.

archeologist + discovered [ancient object/place]

A team of young archeologists worked with local students to study the old village site.

Common collocations
  • archeologist discovers / unearths / excavates
  • field archeologist
  • marine archeologist
  • team of archeologists
  • work as an archeologist
  • become an archeologist
Synonyms
  • archaeologist

    identical meaning; this is the more common international spelling

  • excavator

    narrower — refers specifically to someone who digs at a site, not the full range of analytical work

Usage Note

This is the American English spelling; the British and international spelling is archaeologist (with the digraph ae). Both are pronounced the same way.

Common Mistakes

An archeologist studies living tribes in the Amazon.
An archeologist studies old objects and buildings from the past.
Archeologists study ancient remains; anthropologists study living cultures.
The archeaologist found a fossilized dinosaur bone.
The archeologist found an ancient clay pot at the dig site.
The correct spelling has 'eo' (not 'ea'), and archeologists study human artifacts, not dinosaur fossils (that is paleontology).

Word family

  • archeology
    nounB1
  • archaeology
    nounB1
  • archeological
    adjectiveB1
  • archeologically
    adverbB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All three words describe scholars who study the past, but they differ in what they examine. An archeologist digs up and analyzes physical objects — buildings, tools, pottery, bones — left by earlier human societies. An anthropologist studies human cultures more broadly, often focusing on living communities, their customs, languages, and social structures. A paleontologist studies fossils of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, not necessarily human-related. A historian works mostly with written documents — letters, official records, books — to reconstruct events of the past. For example, an archeologist might uncover a medieval kitchen and identify cooking tools, a historian would read the town's tax records from the same period, and a paleontologist might study a dinosaur skeleton found in the same region but from a much earlier era.

anthropologist ↗paleontologisthistorian ↗

Etymology

GreekLatinFrenchEnglish

The word archeologist comes from French 'archéologiste', which was built from Greek roots: 'arkhaios' (ancient) and 'logos' (study, word). It entered English in the 1600s. The spelling 'archeologist' (without the 'ae' digraph) is the standard American English form; the older international spelling 'archaeologist' uses the Latin-style 'ae' to reflect the original Greek 'ai' diphthong.