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Eg archaeologist's short axe to carve ground (9)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

excavator

'eg archaeologist's' is the definition.

'short axe to carve ground' is the wordplay.
'short' means to remove the last letter.
'ground' indicates anagramming the letters ('grind' the letters into a new form).
'axe'+'to'+'carve'='axetocarve'
'axetocarve' with its last letter taken off is 'axetocarv'.
'axetocarv' is an anagram of 'EXCAVATOR'.

(Another definition for excavator that I've seen is " Powered machine for digging earth".)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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