Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1838.

• Johann Georg Ramsauer discovers a large prehistoric cemetery near Hallstatt.
• Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis find and describe Serpent Mound in Ohio.

• The Rev. John Wilson publishes "Antiquities found at Woodperry, Oxon",^[1] an early account of excavations at a medieval village site (in Oxfordshire, England).

• The Stele of Arniadas is found at the necropolis of the Corfu Palaiopolis.

• August 10 - The Smithsonian Institution is founded in Washington, D.C.^[2]
• The Cambrian Archaeological Association is founded in Wales by Harry Longueville Jones and John Williams (Ab Ithel) and launches its journal Archaeologia Cambrensis.
• The French School at Athens is founded.

• Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes first publishes his discoveries over the previous two decades of a worked flint implement in the context of elephant and rhinoceros remains in the gravels of the Somme valley
• John Disney publishes first edition of Museum Disneianum
• Journal of the British Archaeological Association first published

• February 19 - Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, French Orientalist (d. 1923)

• List of years in archaeology
• 1845 in archaeology
• 1847 in archaeology