He is most famous for his excavations at Great Zimbabwe which provided the first solid evidence that the site was built by Shona peoples.
He began his professional archaeological career in 1898 working for Flinders Petrie in Egypt, uncovering the mortuary temple of Senwosret III at Abydos.
In 1906 he was appointed as Curator of the Egyptian Section at the Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, taking charge of the collection following Sara Yorke Stevenson's resignation in 1905.
[4] In 1901, Nature Magazine were disconcerted, as the Egyptologist Randall-Maciver had suggested: "it is well worth considering whether the pre-dynastic race of Egypt is not in the main a blending in various proportions of Semite and Negro.
"[5] With funding from Eckley B. Coxe Jr., Randall-MacIver initiated research into the relationship between Egypt and Nubia, uncovering some of the earliest evidence of ancient Nubian culture, dating back to 3100 BCE.