1884 in archaeology

Explorations

• Rev. William Collings Lukis and Sir Henry Dryden, Bart., survey megalithic monuments in Scotland, Cumberland and Westmoreland.

Excavations

• October – Augustus Pitt Rivers begins excavation of the Romano-British settlement site on Woodcutts Common, on his Cranborne Chase estate in Dorset.
• Tanis, Egypt: the first excavation conducted by Flinders Petrie.
• Excavations at the Oracle of Apollo on Ptoion are begun by the French School at Athens.

Finds

• Winter – First burials of the Remedello culture.
• Hittites' script identified on a monument at Boğazkale discovered by William Wright.

Institutions

• Pitt Rivers Museum established by donation of Augustus Pitt Rivers' anthropological and archaeological collections to the University of Oxford.
• Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology established at the University of Cambridge, opening as the Cambridge Antiquarian Library and Museum.

Publications

• François Lenormant – La Genèse traduite d'après l'hébreu, avec distinction des éléments constitutifs du texte, suivi d‘un essai de restitution des textes dont s'est servi le dernier rédacteur.

Births

• January 26 – Roy Chapman Andrews, American explorer.
• February 1 – Herbert Eustis Winlock, American Egyptologist who worked for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
• July 25 – Davidson Black, Canadian paleoanthropologist