1790s in archaeology

The decade of the 1790s in archaeology involved some significant events.

Explorations

1799: Napoleon in Egypt: French troops occupy Egyptian territory. Tomb KV20 in the Valley of the Kings is located.

1794–96: Roman tessellated pavements found at Frampton, Dorset, depicting one of the earliest known Christian symbols in England.
1796: The Roman fort, vicus, bridge abutments and associated remains of Hadrian's Wall are excavated at Chesters, in England.
1798: The first recorded excavations at Stonehenge are made by William Cunnington and Richard Colt Hoare.
Formal excavations continue at Pompeii.

1790
* Pediment of the Roman temple at Bath, England, is discovered during work near the Roman Baths.
* Townley Discobolus and Lansdowne Heracles are discovered at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, Italy.
* Bones presumed to be those of English poet John Milton are disinterred during repairs to the church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate in London.
1796: Summer - Ribchester Hoard and helmet found in Lancashire, England.
1797: July 17 - The tomb of John, King of England, is rediscovered at Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar.
1799: July 15 - At the town of Rosetta, a harbor on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, French troops find the Rosetta Stone, inscribed with parallel texts in Greek, Egyptian demotic and hieroglyphs.

1793: James Douglas - Nenia Britannica, or, A Sepulchral History of Great Britain, from the earliest period to its general conversion to Christianity, the first account of the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon site with artefacts systematically described and illustrated.
1797: James Hutton, a Scotsman who has been called "the Father of Geology," publishes theories describing the earth as destroying and renewing itself in a never-ending cycle.
1799: Vice President of the United States Thomas Jefferson, writing in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4, describes the bones of Megalonyx jeffersonii, an extinct ground sloth.

1797: January 3 - Three of the stones making up Stonehenge fall due to heavy frosts.
1798: December 10 - Some antiquities being shipped to England by Sir William Hamilton are lost in the wreck of HMS Colossus.

1790: December 22 - Jean-François Champollion, French decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs
1792: June 10 - John Clayton, English antiquarian
1793: January 22 - Caspar Reuvens, founder of Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, first professor of archaeology
1794: July 7 - Frances Stackhouse Acton, née Knight, English botanist, archaeologist, artist and writer
1796: November 27 - John MacEnery, Irish-born priest and pioneer archaeologist
1797: October 5 - John Gardiner Wilkinson, English traveller, writer and pioneer Egyptologist
1798: Approximate date - Kyriakos Pittakis, Greek archaeologist
1799: December 12 - Karl Bryullov, Russian painter of ''The Last Day of Pompeii''