Kinda curious given the fact that classicists really a ton on secondary sources for major events and archaeology, and there job consists mostly asking new questions at old sources.Compared to a americanist who has a large volume of primary sources on particular people (enough to form things like the papers primary source compilation books) and a good proportion of the buildings were there ''characters'' walked in survive.
classicist-someone who studies classical antiquity and ancient Rome and ancient Greece
Americanist-someone who studies america in this case it's history
Classicist reporting in; they're pretty much the same :).
We have a lot of sources for a lot in the ancient world (not enough for the Greeks regrettably imo, though I favour Rome myself), and a large number of the buildings they describe do survive, or at least descriptions, etc. of them do.
As an example, a recent essay I had to do was "In what ways was food both a problem and a political tool in Rome in the later republic?" ; look at any mentions of food, where it came from, was it used politically, who by, why, to what ends and results, etc.
The skills one uses are more or less identical to modern history.