George Ellis Burcaw was born July 13, 1921 in Houston, Texas, to George Henry and Mary Elizabeth (Ellis) Burcaw. He received his BA from Maryville College, Tennessee, in 1943 and his MA from the University of Idaho in 1973. From 1946 to 1956 he did post graduate work at the University of Chicago, 1946-1948; the University of Arizona, 1949-1950; the University of Paris, 1951-1952; the University of Wisconsin, 1956, and the University of Pennsylvania, 1960.

He was museum director of the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin from 1952-1958, chief curator of the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia, 1958-1962, and curator of state museums in Colorado, 1962-1966. In 1966 he came to the University of Idaho where he was director of the museum and professor of museology and anthropology until his retirement in 1988 to Tucson, Arizona. His publications include Introduction to Museology, 1972; Introduction to Museum Work, 1975; Museum Training Courses in the United States and Canada, 1971; and The Saxon House: a Cultural Index in European Ethnography, 1973, 1979.