Walter Halden

Walter Halden is a professor of Near-Eastern Studies at the University of California. It's debatable whether he's better known for his expertise or for his volcanic temper, which has terrorized countless students and colleagues. Like his genial American colleague, Vincent Duncan, tends to casual shirts and dungarees, although his clothing is stained and sun-bleached to the point where only the most optimistic observer would be willing to wager that the original color of his shirts was blue. Halden is also reasonably fluent in Arabic as well, which comes in handy when he's swearing at a digger who is clumsy with his shovel.
Halden focuses most of his efforts on mapping out the site. In his words, he's not a "pot picker". He does have a keen eye for the subtle disturbances in the soil that mark the locations of buildings and roads, and he's often called upon to document the structures that are located.