1973 in archaeology

Explorations

Excavations

• Meadowcroft Rock Shelter under James M. Adovasio.
• Heavenly Horse Tomb, a mounded tomb of Silla royalty in Gyeongju, Korea.
• Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski and her colleagues has the opportunity to work on the previously undisturbed peristyle garden of the House of G. Polybius in Pompeii.
• Somerset Levels Project begins.

  Finds

• Vindolanda tablets discovered by Robin Birley near Hadrian's Wall, England.
• Fossils of a human premolar and 40 mammalian species excavated at Locality 4 in Zhoukoudian, China.
• St Peter's Church, Dunwich, discovered submerged off the Suffolk coast of England by Stuart Bacon.
• A large Song dynasty trade ship of c.1277 CE is dredged up from the waters near the southern coast of China with 12 compartments in its hull. It confirms the descriptions of bulkheaded hull compartments for junks in Zhu Yu's Pingzhou Table Talks of 1119.

  Events

• July 18 - Protection of Wrecks Act passed in the United Kingdom. The first site designated under it is the Cattewater Wreck at Plymouth on September 5.
• The first Mesa Redonda de Palenque conference in Palenque starts a very productive process leading to major improvements in understanding Maya hieroglyphics and the iconography of Maya civilization.
• Confirmation that a site in Iran is the lost city of Anshan.
• Tucson Garbage Project initiated by William Rathje.

  Publications

• Births

• May 19 - Alice Roberts, English evolutionary biologist, biological anthropologist and science and archaeology populariser

  Deaths