1926 in archaeology

The year 1926 saw a number of significant events in the field of archaeology:

Explorations

• February: Thomas Gann visits the Mayan ruin of Coba, and publishes the first first-hand description of the site later in the year.
• Enrique Juan Palacios makes detailed description of Chinkultic.
• Matthew Stirling explores New Guinea (through 1929).
• Leo Frobenius makes the first detailed survey of the central Eastern Desert of Egypt.
• First survey at Tel Hazor made by John Garstang.
• Louis and Mary Leakey discover the neolithic site at Hyrax Hill, Kenya.

Excavations

• British Museum-sponsored excavations at Lubaantun under T. A. Joyce.
• Uaxactun project by Carnegie Institution led by Oliver Ricketson begins.
• Alexander Keiller and Harold St George Gray excavate Windmill Hill, Avebury (continues to 1929).
• Roman amphitheatre at Isca Augusta near Caerleon in South Wales excavated by Victor Erle Nash-Williams.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin joins the ongoing excavations of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, China, as an advisor.

Publications

• Nils Åberg - The Anglo-Saxons in England during the early centuries after the invasion.
• V. Gordon Childe - The Aryans: a Study of Indo-European Origins.

Finds

• October: Johan Gunnar Andersson announces the discovery of two human molars amongst the material excavated from the Peking Man site in Zhoukoudian, China by his assistant Otto Zdansky in 1921 and 1923
• Mayan settlement of El Mirador first discovered
• Crofton Roman Villa discovered by bricklayers in Orpington, England

Miscellaneous

• June - Baghdad Archaeological Museum opens.
• Sir Ellis Minns elected to the Disney Professorship of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

Deaths

• July 12: Gertrude Bell