[2] Burger is married to Lucy Salazar, a Peruvian archaeologist and long time collaborator on many research projects.
He received a doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (1978) where he studied under John Howland Rowe and Dorothy Menzel.
He is co-curator in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha in Cusco, Peru, and has been president of the Institute of Andean Research in New York since 2006.
[3] Burger helped to pioneer the sourcing of cinnabar in the Andes with geochemist Colin Cooke and did important research on Andean diet using carbon isotopes from Machu Picchu, Chavin de Huantarl[5] and Cardal.
[6] Burger located the seven major obsidian sources used in ancient Peru and used this analysis to describe the changing patterns of trade in volcanic glass in the pre-Hispanic Andes.