Digging in. Rifle-toting researcher fights to protect ancient sites.

George has had more than his share of such Indiana Jones-style adventures. He kept a constant vigil at the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad during the Gulf War, catching a nap in the cellar in between air raids; he organized opposition to the truckloads of armed looters who scoured the countryside in the mid-1990s; and he later survived a brutal assault by an unknown assailant. All the while, George has played a critical role in keeping his field alive during a traumatic time. “He really has been cradling Iraqi archaeology for years,” says Michael Müller-Karpe, an archaeologist at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, Germany, who has known George for some 25 years. “Archaeology owes a lot to him.”