In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, salvage anthropology influenced collectors of all kinds, including those interested in music, material culture, and osteology.
Ideas connected to salvage anthropology influenced how cultures were written about and documented through a wide range of publications and popular exhibitions.
When the term was coined in the 1960s, it referred mainly to archeological efforts to find cultural information before an area was obliterated by the construction of reservoirs, power plants, or roads, or before land was leveled for irrigation.
[1] Despite the origins of the term, "salvage anthropology" is most frequently used to describe Euro-American attempts to “preserve” Native American culture in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Archeologists often removed artifacts and human remains from grave sites, paying little attention to whether they were actively being used to bury relatives of tribe members.