Archaeology just went in this build for the first time and we don't yet have any of the support around it to teach players what to do. It has been informative to watch players learn to swim by drowning, but we thought it was time to offer a little more direction. :)

Digsites

Once you train archaeology, you can see digsites on your map (not your minimap - your map). There are always 4 digsites per continent. These will not change until you dig one out. Most of the time, you're probably only going to be concerned with the 4 sites on your current continent, but at higher character and archaeology skill levels, there will be 16 sites active at one time (4 each in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend.)

You will only find sites in zones of your level or lower. A level 25 player will have all 4 sites per continent in level 25 zones. (This means Outland and Northrend will have no sites at this time.) A level 80 player will have all 4 sites in any zone. A low level Kalimdor player might have sites in Ashenvale and Stonetalon, while a level 82 might have Uldum, Ashenvale, Stonetalon and Silithus.

Sites are race specific. You can usually guess the race by the location. Kalimdor tends to have a lot of night elf ruins. Eastern Kingdoms tends to have a lot of dwarf ruins.

Some races are only available on some continents (such as orc and draenei on Outland). You need to have a minimum character level and a minimum archaeology level to use these. Currently you can see them if you are a certain character level but can't gather from them until your archaeology skill is higher. For Outland, the skill is 300. While somewhat consistent with other gathering skills, we think this is confusing and we will change it so that you don't even see the digsites until your archaeology skill is sufficiently high. Tol'vir artifacts are the most rewarding, but also require near max archaeology skill to recover.

Some players are reporting some issues with digsites not showing up correctly. We'll look into these bugs.

Unlike other gathering skills, digsites are player-specific. Other players will be searching in different locations. There is no competition for digsites.

Fragments

Each digsite can be searched 3 times before it despawns and a new site spawns. If there is a digsite somewhere too far away from you or otherwise inconvenient, just ignore it and hit the closer ones. You won't run out.

To search a digsite, use the Survey ability. The survey tool will spawn and point in the approximate direction of the artifact. Red means you're far away. Yellow means you're close. Green means you may be within 40 yards or so. When you discover your find, you'll get fragments specific to a particular race.

There are two main strategies to surveying. You can attempt to triangulate by moving around the outer edge of a digsite. (Like quest blobs, the digsites are not necessarily circular.) Other players just keep surveying, heading in the direction the tool points until they strike paydirt.

Remember, the thing you uncover is yours. There is no competition with other players and nobody can gank your node.

Artifacts

Whenever you get a new fragment for a race, you'll start a research project. You can only work on one artifact per race at a time. When you have enough fragments, click Solve to complete that artifact. You won't waste excess fragments -- they will just start the next project. You can be working on one project for each race at a time.

Most artifacts are common. These give you a little bit of lore or flavor text and an item you can sell for a small profit (presumably to a museum!) The profit increases as the value of the artifact increases. You can estimate this by the number of fragments needed to finish the artifact. You will only find cheaper artifacts at low level, but you can find cheap and valuable artifacts at higher level (the reason for this is we want players to be able to find all the artifacts if they want to). You won't find a second copy of a common object until you have found all the artifacts of that race. If you get stuck at a certain skill level of archaeology or character level, you may find an artifact more than once until you reach the next tier.

Some artifacts are rare. These always make a blue or purple item. Many of these have no in-game power and are toys or for flavor. Some of them are actual weapons and armor. The latter items are all bound to account. They aren't heirlooms in that they don't scale, but you can pass them around. So if you are level 80 and you find a level 60 axe, you can always have another character use it when they are level 60. You will never get a rare artifact more than once.

The future

We designed archaeology to be easily expandable, so we plan to add much more content in future patches, including new races to research (though to be fair, there's a sizable amount of content already). We also have a feature that is not available on beta yet, that allows you to use your archaeology skill for a slight (think Fish Feast-level) bonus in the Cataclysm dungeons.

EDIT: As a clarification, you can currently gather fragments that are higher than your level (e.g. orc or draenei for many of you at ~100 archaeology) but you can't complete artifacts yet until your skill is at 300. This should be less confusing in an upcoming build.

Q u o t e:
You can survey and pick up any fragment from lvl 1 archeology. (Tol'vir and outland and northrend for exemple).

Right. This is because your character level is high enough. We are going to change it so that your archaeology skill has to be high enough as well.

Q u o t e:
You can get dulpicate common item before having done them all. I got The Highborne Pyxis a second time after 3 item made, and now I have a new common I never made before.

The Highborne Pyxis is say tier 1 night elf. You will find tier 1 troll items if you go to troll sites. But you won't find any more unique night elf items until you get to tier 2. Getting a common item a second time should indicate to you that you need to improve your archaeology skill (fortunately, the pyxis will still help you do that). If you are at max skill and starting to get duplicates, then you have found them all... at least until we add more.

Q u o t e:
The Fossilized Hatchling makes a white item, not blue.

That's just a bug. We'll fix it.

Q u o t e:
Right now, it's almost impossible to skill up above 100. You sometimes get 5 skill point frmo making a common item, but it's rare(I made 5 or 6 since I reached 100, and I got 1 skill up, with another when I turned in the rare fossilised hatchling).

Yes, we think the solution is to let you always get +5 skill on every artifact no matter what level it is. Lower tier artifacts will provide less monetary reward, but they will complete faster as compensation.

Q u o t e:
Also right now, if you start it late it's really tedious, with only 4 dig site per continent. Outland and Northrend are fine, but Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom are HUGE, and getting from one site to other usually means crossing 3 whole zones every time. The amount of shown dig site should increase as you unlock more races/dig sites/level up. That or make those two continent count as 4 "zones" like, nothern and southern Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom, each with 4 dig sites.

We can increase the number of digs per site (from 3 to 5 as someone suggested) or the number of sites per continent if we need to. Our hope was that since there are always 4 sites, you're only screwed if all 4 appear really far away from you. If you have even 1 close to you, then you're good, because a new site will spawn once you finish the previous one.

Q u o t e:
From what I've noticed, there are 3 Common artifacts you can find for Night Elves, Trolls, Fossils, and Dwarves from 1-100. Once you ding 100, none of those projects will yield skill-ups anymore. However, you also unlock 3-4 new Commons for each race at level 100, and those do give skill-ups. I've also noticed that higher level projects have more artifacts with tablet slots. In fact I think the only 1-100 project that has a tablet slot is the Cinnabar Bijou.

That all seems correct from my (sometimes addled) recollection.

Q u o t e:


I must be missing something on this here. I've found several different items for this (night elf, dwarf, tol'vir), but have not yet been able to use one of them. I'm around 107 skill now, and they're just taking up bag space. Is there some extra criteria on the fragments that I'm not meeting to use these? Attempting to use them does nothing at all.

If the items are gray, just sell them. Pretend you are visiting the Explorer's League or Reliquary and they are buying the item off of you. (We didn't do this because we thought it would be annoying and instead let you visit any vendor.) If the items are blue or purple, then you probably want to keep them. There may be a few items that are the incorrect color, like the baby raptor.

Q u o t e:
Personally, I think I would prefer a list of research we can do, and let us choose which one we want to make at that time.

You can do this to some extent by choosing which race to chase. This only works if say you have one night elf and 3 troll sites. If you get 4 trolls, then you need to finish a troll and hope to get a night elf next. This bit of randomness is to offset the fact that you will eventually get all the artifacts if you stick with it.

Q u o t e:
Two things I haven't seen mentioned...

Using Runes/Tablets/Scrolls:
Open up your Archeology screen

Click on the race the Rune/Tablet/Scroll/etc. is for

Look on the lower left; is there a socket? If no, you can't use the rune/tablet/scroll yet.

If yes, drag your rune/tablet/scroll into the socket; it gives you 6 pieces.

OR, left-click in the socket, and if you have an appropriate rune/tablet/scroll, it will pop it in.

Note 1: Right-clicking does nothing. Gotta drag-n-drop.
Note 2: It doesn't stay in the socket if you navigate away. Don't bother dragging and dropping until you're ready to make your artifact; that means you're 6 or fewer pieces away from completing it.
Note 3: If you need 2 pieces, and the rune/tablet/scroll gives 6, the left over pieces will be applied to your next artifact, so no worries about "losing" them.

Going to quote this, because I believe it is all correct.

We call the tablets etc. "keystones." They are items (not currency) and can be traded, sold, etc. You will eventually want some for dungeons.

Q u o t e:
JC Prospecting works on them. It requires five of them, and it destroys them without giving anything. I just lost 5 dwarf thingies, but I had to try :)

Wow. That sounds like a very strange and unintended bug. We'll investigate.