1928 in archaeology

Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1928.

Explorations

 * American astronomer and University of Arizona professor A. E. Douglass participates in a National Geographic Society research project under Neil Merton Judd exploring Chaco Canyon. Using his newly invented technique of dendrochronology, Douglass dates Chetro Ketl and dozens of Chacoan sites (through 1929).
 * Tell Arpachiyah in Iraq explored by Reginald Campbell Thompson.

Excavations

 * September: John Garstang conducts first excavations at Et-Tell.
 * September–October: Porlock Stone Circle on Exmoor in England surveyed by Harold St George Gray.
 * Italian archaeologist Luigi Maria Ugolini begins excavations at Buthrotum in Epirus (modern-day Albania).
 * V. Gordon Childe begins excavations at Skara Brae.
 * Stuart Piggott begins excavations at Butser Hill.
 * Marthe and Saint-Just Péquart begin excavation of Mesolithic sites on the Breton island of Téviec.
 * The first excavations begin at Yinxu, China led by Li Chi of the Chinese Institute of History and Philosophy.
 * Chinese archeologist Pei Wenzhong joins the continuing excavations at Peking Man site in Zhoukoudian, China.
 * Excavations at Beit Shemesh (continue to 1931).
 * Gertrude Caton Thompson begins excavations at Great Zimbabwe.
 * Dorothy Garrod excavates cave sites in Judea and south Kurdistan.
 * A Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft and University of Pennsylvania team led by Oscar Reuther begins excavations at Ctesiphon.
 * John Winter Crowfoot begins excavations of early Christian churches at Jerash (Gerasa) in Transjordan (continue to 1930).
 * Mortimer Wheeler begins excavations at Lydney Park (continues to 1929).

Finds

 * Continuing excavations at Peking Man Site in Zhoukoudian, China led by Davidson Black uncover more fossils of a new species he dubs Sinanthropus pekinensis.
 * Ruins of Ugarit.
 * First traces of Mal'ta–Buret' culture found in Siberia.
 * First inscriptions of Byblos syllabary excavated by Maurice Dunand.

Publications

 * V. Gordon Childe - The Most Ancient East: the oriental prelude to European prehistory.
 * O. G. S. Crawford and Alexander Keiller - Wessex from the Air (Oxford).

Miscellaneous

 * Davidson Black founds the Cenozoic Research Laboratory for the research and appraisal of fossils unearthed at Peking Man Site in Zhoukoudian, China
 * Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum inaugurated in San Jose, California

Births

 * February 2: Stanley South, American archaeologist; author of Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology (1977) (died 2016)
 * March 8: Björn Ambrosiani, Swedish archaeologist
 * April 26: Charles Thomas, Cornish prehistorian (died 2016)
 * September 27: Margaret Rule, British maritime archaeologist (died 2015)

Deaths
Arthur Mace of the British archaeologist Howard Carter excavation team, said to have died of arsenic poisoning in 1928.