Falcon Dam and the Archaeological Landscape Today

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Falcon dam and reservoir near Zapata, Texas, was completed in 1954 as a binational project for flood control of the Rio Grande by Mexico and the United States. Some archaeological projects were completed before the area was flooded, cemeteries were exhumed and moved to new areas outside of the high flood waters, and whole towns were uprooted and relocated. Over the last 70 years since the start of the project, many older sites have now been uncovered and are being exposed. Remnants of the old towns on both sides of the border show how drought has now exposed them and newly exposed sites, changing the landscape from what was to what is today. The last time the water was this low was in the 1990s. I will demonstrate that this area is a dynamic landscape due to new exposure of sites and how humans respond to nature. This response for downstream protections called for dams to control the river and the consequences we are seeing today are yearly landscape changes and what we can do to help mitigate if not protect it.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36427.0