Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1884.

Explorations

• Rev. William Collings Lukis and Sir Henry Dryden, Bart., survey megalithic monuments in Scotland, Cumberland and Westmoreland.^[1]

Excavations

• October - Augustus Pitt Rivers begins excavation of the Romano-British settlement site on Woodcutts Common, on his Cranborne Chase estate in Dorset.^[2]
• 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.^[3]

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.^[4]
• Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology established at the University of Cambridge, opening as the Cambridge Antiquarian Library and Museum.^[5]

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 (Paris).

Births

• January 26 - Roy Chapman Andrews, American explorer (d. 1960).^[6]
• February 1 - Herbert Eustis Winlock, American Egyptologist who worked for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (d. 1950)^[7]
• July 25 - Davidson Black, Canadian paleoanthropologist (d. 1934)^[8]