Short answers, pulled from the story.
King Nabonidus of Babylon, ruling in the 6th century BC, stands as the first recorded archaeologist in human history. He searched for foundation deposits of temples dedicated to the sun god Šamaš and the warrior goddess Anunitu in Sippar, and a sanctuary to the moon god in Harran. His work laid the earliest known groundwork for the systematic recovery and analysis of material culture.
The transition from amateur antiquarianism to scientific archaeology began in the mid-18th century with the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. These sites had been buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Early excavations were often haphazard, ignoring concepts like stratification and context.
Augustus Pitt Rivers, an army officer and ethnologist, is widely regarded as the first scientific archaeologist. He began excavations on his land in England in the 1880s and insisted that all artifacts, not just beautiful or unique ones, be collected and catalogued. He arranged them by type and chronology to highlight evolutionary trends.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed in 1990. This legislation limited the right of research institutions to possess human remains following the conflict highlighted by the Kennewick Man case. The repatriation of artifacts to their original descendants has become a major trend, exemplified by the 2005 reburial of ancestral remains from the Kitigan Zibi reservation in Quebec.
Modern archaeologists use remote sensing to locate sites within large areas before a single shovel touches the ground. Passive instruments like satellite imagery detect natural energy reflected from the scene, while active instruments such as Lidar use laser pulses to measure distance and create detailed topographical maps. Geophysical survey techniques, including magnetometers and electrical resistivity devices, allow archaeologists to see beneath the ground without digging.