The emergency nature of the Inter-Agency Archaeological Program is well illustrated by this photograph of a field party starting the excavation of a site in the shadow of a dam which is rapidly nearing completion, the Angostura reservoir in South Dakota. Since this was taken, the area where the men are working has gone under forty feet of water. THE INTER-AGENCY ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROGRAM For the IN THE By Frederick Committee for the Spring 1931 STATES Johnson Recovery A RCHAEOLOGISTS LEARNED,IN 1945, THAT THE Federal government was to build literally X JL hundreds of dams in numerous river basins throughout the United States. The reservoirs behind the dams were destined to flood many hundreds of square miles of valley and bottom land. It was ob/' UNITED SALVAGE of Archaeological Remains vious that this would obliterate a large and very significant portion of our knowledge of the history of the Indians. As is well recognized, this history is valuable to scientists, to educators, and also to the general public which has a deep-rooted interest in our predecessors in North America. 25