excavation vs artifact

excavation and artifact both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
excavation	Yes	No	No	No
artifact	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, artifact is a hypernym of excavation; that is, artifact is a word with a broader meaning than excavation:

Other hypernyms of excavation include artefact.

excavation (noun)	artifact (noun)
the act of extracting ores or coal etc from the earth	a man-made object taken as a whole
the act of digging
a hole in the ground made by excavating
the site of an archeological exploration