Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1863.

• Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy begin joint exploration of caves in the valley of the Vézère, in southern France.^[1]

• Excavations at Ephesus by John Turtle Wood begin.
• William Copeland Borlase supervises excavations of the re-discovered prehistoric settlement and fogou at Carn Euny in Cornwall.

• Samuel Ferguson's Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales and Scotland is published posthumously.^[2]
• The text of the Iguvine Tablets (3rd–1st centuries BC) is first published, by Francis William Newman in London.
• Zeitschrift für ägyptisches Sprache und Altertumskunde begins publication.

• April 15 – Winged Victory of Samothrace found at Samothrace by Charles Champoiseau. Made c.190 BC, it is now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
• April 20 – Augustus of Prima Porta in the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, near Rome.
• Nydam Boats found in Denmark by Conrad Engelhardt.^[3]
• Early human jawbone found in proximity to flint tools at Moulin Quignon in France by Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes, subsequently considered a hoax perpetrated by one of his diggers.

• Anthropological Society of London formed

• July 4 – Hugo Winckler, German Assyriologist (died 1913)
• July 13 – Margaret Murray, Anglo-Indian Egyptologist (died 1963)
• Francis Joseph Bigger, Irish antiquarian (died 1926)

• July 3 – Alexander Henry Rhind, Scottish Egyptologist (born 1833)
• November 4 [O.S. October 23] – Kyriakos Pittakis, Greek archaeologist (born c. 1798)

• List of years in archaeology
• 1862 in archaeology
• 1864 in archaeology