As one would expect, the prehistoric monuments that cover the Balearics proved to gain the attention of scholars at a very early time. Aside from fantasy oriented histories of the islands written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the first appearance of a scientific approach to Balearic history was John Armstrong's The History of the Island of Minorca (1752). Armstrong discussed possible uses for Menorca's taulas ("T" shaped megaliths like the one on the previous page) including ones which were defensive, religious, or funerary. Not much historical progress was made until 1818 when a Menorcan scholar named Juán Ramis y Ramis published Antiguedades celticas de la isla de Menorca desde los tiempos mas remotos hasta el siglo IV de la Era christiana (Celtic antiquities of the island of Menorca from prehistoric times until the 4th century A.D.). Ramis followed Armstrong's lead in concluding that Menorcan monuments were remnants of a Druid society, which we now know is completely wrong. However, his contributions in recording different sites are an invaluable resource to modern archaeologists, because due to local interests many monuments which were standing in Ramis's time are now gone (probably part of some stone wall). Over the next thirty years historians continued to adopt the theory that Menorca's monuments were druidical. In 1844, however, the Archaeological Committee for the Balearics was set up in Palma de Mallorca, and its members shifted their opinions away from this Celtic past. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw a tremendous amount of historians flock to Mallorca and Menorca, all with the intent on cataloging the hundreds of open air sites on the islands and, hopefully, unmasking the mysteries behind them.

The first major archaeological excavation in the Balearics occurred in 1920 when the Archaeological Excavations Service of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans of Barcelona sent a team of professors to investigate southwest Mallorca. Many excavations were done by this group of archaeologists throughout the next fifteen years, mainly focusing on the establishment of a reliable chronology of the Balearics. The culmination of this study occurred in 1930 when Cambridge University sent a mission to Mallorca led by renowned Egyptologist Margaret Murray, who worked in conjunction with the archaeologists from the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.

After a brief period of relative inactivity on the islands, Balearic archaeology entered what would be its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s. Daniel Woods and William Waldren led this archaeological revival. Waldren to this day continues to be one of the most prominent names in all of Western Mediterranean archaeology. His excavations of caves (notably the Muleta Cave) have proven wrong many of the previous assumptions about the Balearics. Key to this was his implementation of Carbon 14 dating, which show human habitation of northwestern Mallorca over two thousand years before it had been supposed. In 1991 Waldren hosted the IInd Deya International Conference of Prehistory: Recent Developments in Western Mediterranean Prehistory, marking a major effort in bringing together different ideas and studies. Archaeology appears to have a strong future in the Balearics, perhaps to be led by native Mallorquins and Menorquins who currently study under the prominent foreign archaeologists like Waldren. It has been suggested that it will take years before all known sites on Mallorca and Menorca are even surveyed, and it is likely that there are countless sites yet to be discovered. An unfortunate side note concerning the future worthy of mention: Many Balearic sites are dissapearing at a fast rate, as they are often above ground. Land in the Balearics is becomeing worth a great deal, and these sites are being recklessly cleared by developers and farmers wishing to better utilize their land.