1880 in archaeology

Explorations

• William Matthew Flinders Petrie travels to Egypt and conducts a survey of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Excavations

• Nicolay Nicolaysen excavates the Gokstad ship in Norway.
• Heinrich Schliemann begins excavation around the Tomb of Minyas at Orchomenus (Boeotia).

Finds

• The foundations of a convent, first erected in 670, discovered at Minster in Kent.
• Varvakeion Athena.
• The mandible of a Neanderthal child is discovered in a secure context in Šipka cave in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (modern-day Czech Republic) associated with cultural debris including hearths, Mousterian tools and bones of extinct animals.

Publications

• Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and Juan Vilanova y Piera publish their initial findings on the paintings in the Cave of Altamira, suggesting to initial scepticism that they are of the Paleolithic period.
• The Journal of Hellenic Studies begins publication.

Births

• April 11 – Julio C. Tello, Peruvian archaeologist (d. 1947)
• April 17 – Leonard Woolley, British archaeologist of Mesopotamia (d. 1960)

References

References

1. Schliemann, Heinrich. (1881). "Orchomenos: Bericht über meine Ausgrabungen in Böotischen Orchomenos".
2. (11 November 1880). "Minster". The Cornishman.
3. (1971). "A numismatic index to the "Journal of Hellenic Studies", 1880-1969, by J. R. Jones". W. Heffer and Sons.
4. "Charles Leonard Woolley". The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.