Archaeology, first announced at RuneFest 2019, centers about OSRS gold excavating for materials, artifacts, and relics in five dig site places. The first 20 degrees of Archaeology are offered for free-to-play users, including the introductory dig site, Kharid-Et, which can be unlocked at par five Archaeology.

Developers announced that upon logging in at March 30th Trimmed Completionist, Completionist, and Gatherer's capes will see them eliminated from their inventories. However, members that reach level 99 within six months of their RuneScape skill's launch or degree 120 following the six-month interval will obtain the Max Cape, in addition to see the yield of their Completionist and Trimmed Completionist capes. These six months are considered a grace period to even the odds for players rushing to max out the RuneScape skill, wherein items such as experience lamps, bonus experience, along with other experience-boosting items will be disabled for Archaeology.

Repairing artifacts and relics are expected to constitute the majority of Archaeology rewards while gathering Archaeology materials will require up much of a player's time. Relics will be especially helpful to gamers grinding out the Archaeology RuneScape ability, as obtaining and dissembling Relics will reward players using apparatus such as the Ancient Gizmo and XP Capacitor that improve the players' ability to earn expertise in other RuneScape abilities.

Besides rewarding the player with massive amounts of experience, repaired artifacts could be awarded to private collectors like the Wise Old Man, exchanged for new money when donated to the Buy Runescape gold Varrock Museum, or simply kept by players to future use.