Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1938.

• Matthew Stirling first visits the Tres Zapotes and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán sites.

• The Iron Age farmstead site at Little Woodbury, Wiltshire, England, by Gerhard Bersu for the Prehistoric Society using open area excavation techniques (continues to 1939; published 1940).
• Llantwit Major Roman Villa in Wales, by V. E. Nash-Williams (continues to 1948).
• The Neolithic settlement of Rinyo on Rousay in Orkney, Scotland, by V. Gordon Childe (resumed 1946).

• T. D. Kendrick - Anglo-Saxon Art to A.D. 900.
• Wilhelm König - "Ein Galvanisches Element aus der Partherzeit?". Forschungen und Fortschritte 14:8–9 (on the "Baghdad Battery").

• June - TM 1517, first remains of Paranthropus robustus, from Kromdraai fossil site in South Africa.^[1]
• Maya site of Caracol is rediscovered.
• Luther Cressman, the first to explore the region, discovers preserved 9,000-year-old shredded sage sandals at Fort Rock Cave in south central Oregon, USA. Until radiocarbon dating verifies his find, his belief has been that humans had occupied the area a maximum of 4,000 years ago.
• 'Barber surgeon of Avebury'.
• Bronze Head from Ife.

• March 8 - Lamia Al-Gailani Werr, Iraqi archaeologist (died 2019)
• October 4 - Gennady Zdanovich, Russian archaeologist (died 2020)
• Anthony Aveni, American anthropologist^[2]

• February 24 - Thomas Gann, British explorer and archaeologist (born 1867)
• August 9 - Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist (born 1873)