1873 in archaeology

Excavations

• January; November – George Smith sets out for excavations at Nineveh.

Explorations

• May 29 – Deir ed-Darb, a first-century BCE monumental tomb from Second Temple Judea, is discovered in the Ottoman Syria Vilayet by a Royal Engineers soldier.
• Antonio García Cubas makes first scholarly description of the ruins of the Toltec capital in Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico.
• José Ramos Orihuela discovers the cave paintings in the Painted cave of Galdar at Gáldar, Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria.

Finds

• May 27 - German Classical archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovers "Priam's Treasure" at the presumed site of Troy in Anatolia.
• The Hiddensee treasure, a hoard of pendants and other gold jewellery from the time of Viking ruler Harald Bluetooth, is found on the German island of Hiddensee in the Baltic.
• Bharhut stupa is identified in India by Alexander Cunningham.

Births

• June 29 - Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist
• July 28 - John Winter Crowfoot, English educational administrator and archaeologist