During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European museums regularly sponsored such excavations throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, sharing the ownership of their discoveries with the host country.

In 1994, UNESCO sponsored archaeological excavations in the area.

It has been active in sponsoring archaeological excavations, conservation and other scientific work.

In the late 1950's the Danish National Museum sponsored underwater excavations of the area and five buried ships were recovered, the biggest number of Viking ships ever found in one place.

The Amerind Foundation sponsored several major archaeological excavations in the Southwest and northern Mexico throughout the 1950s, resulting in a number of publications, and in 1959, the Fulton-Hayden Memorial Library and Art Museum became the most recent addition to the burgeoning Amerind Foundation's facilities.

The Corps of Engineers had sponsored excavations of the area in 1984 which helped confirm much of the historical accounts.

The School also sponsors excavations and provides centers for advanced research in archaeological and related topics at its excavations in the Athenian Agora and Ancient Corinth, and it houses an archaeological laboratory (the Wiener Laboratory) at the main building complex in Athens.

He sponsored excavations in southern Russia in search of artifacts to support his last obsession, that Odin was a historical personage from what is now Russia who began a Scandinavian royal line in the first century A.D.

The Vatican sponsored archeological excavations under Saint Peter's in the years 1940-1949 which revealed parts of a necropolis dating to Imperial times.

Andrew Carnegie sponsored excavations that led to the discovery of the Diplodocus carnegii - and then donated replicas and casts to museums in South America and Europe.