Windover Archaeological Site

Discovered by accident in 1982, the Windover Archaeological Site is a burial place of Early Native Americans who inhabited this region 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Burials were placed underwater in the peat of a shallow pond, and this peat preserved normally perishable artifacts and human tissues. The site contains the largest skeletal sample in the New World, the oldest bottle gourd found north of Mexico, the largest and most complex sample of early textiles in the New World, a pollen record from the end of the Pleistocene to Recent Eras, and some of the oldest DNA recovered from brain tissue and bone. Its remarkable preservation has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct some of the earliest New World diets from stomach contents and scientific analysis. The site also produced the largest and most complex textile collection ever recovered from an Early Archaic period site and a remarkable inventory of organic artifacts including wood and fibers. Archaeologists from Florida State University were among those who explored the site.

Florida · United States