ABSTRACT
The Interagency Archaeology Salvage Program (IASP) in Texas was initiated in 1945, when the Smithsonian Institution (SI) opened a River Basin Surveys (RBS) office in Austin under the direction of Joe Ben Wheat at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). The salvage program located and recorded an estimated 1,600 archaeological sites at the reservoir projects. Many were tested by limited excavation, and scores of the more important ones were extensively excavated. The brief description of the state of archaeology in Texas in the 1940s and 1950s will provide a baseline from which to evaluate the extent to which the salvage program advanced knowledge of the native and the early Euro-American inhabitants of Texas. In 1945 when Joe Ben Wheat opened the RBS office in Austin, there were four other archaeologists in Texas who could be termed professionals by virtue of job title and advanced degrees in archaeology or anthropology.
