The Windover Archeological Site is a Middle Archaic (8000 to 1000 BC) archaeological site and National Historic Landmark in Brevard County near Titusville, Florida, United States, on the central east coast of the state. Windover is a muck pond where skeletal remains of at least 168 individuals were found buried in the peat at the bottom of the pond. The skeletons were well preserved because of the peat. In addition, remarkably well-preserved brain tissue has been recovered from 91 skulls from the site. DNA from the brain tissue has been sequenced. The collection of human skeletal remains and artifacts recovered from Windover Pond represent among the largest finds of each type from the Archaic Period. Windover is important to worldwide archaeology because of the preserved brain tissue found there as well as the extant textiles and grave goods.
Site The Windover site (archaeological site number 8BR46) is a small freshwater pond covering about in Brevard County, Florida, about from Cape Canaveral and adjacent to the Atlantic Coastal Ridge. The pond has held water continuously for the last 10,000 years. During the Middle Archaic period, sea level was considerably lower than it is today, and the pond lay above the local water table. It was fed only by rainfall and runoff from the surrounding landscape and contained a thin layer of water over a shallow layer of peat.
As sea levels rose over thousands of years, the local water table also rose, and the pond gradually became fed by groundwater as well as rainfall. By 1984, when archaeologists began excavating the site, the pond contained five distinct layers of peat. In the center of the pond, the peat was covered by about of water. The top layer of peat, Zone 1, labeled Black Peat, consists of a dark brown to black herbaceous marsh peat over a dark brown to brown hardwood swamp peat. Zone 2, labeled Red/Brown Peat, where the burials were found, is a reddish-brown mixed hardwood swamp peat. Lower zones in the pond include the Rubber Peat, a layer of gyttja (decayed peat), and the Water Lily Peat, a peat derived from Nymphaea plants, with sub-zones consisting of Nymphaea and Cyperus and of Nymphaea and Sagittaria plants. The bottom zone is a layer of peaty sand on top of quartz sand. Windover Pond has a unusually neutral pH of 6.1 (other ponds in the vicinity have an average pH of 2.9), the water has high sulphur and other mineral content, and the peat is anaerobic, all of which is believed to have contributed to the preservation of the organic material found with the burials.
The period in which Windover Pond was being used for burials, from about 8000 Before Present (BP) until about 7000 BP, was the peak of the Hypsithermal, a warm and dry period. The area around the pond was a dry oak woodland. The climate was similar to today, with a continental pattern in the winter and a tropical pattern in the summer, although the continental pattern may have been stronger than the tropical pattern, with less rainfall in the summer.
Discovery and excavation
In 1982, workers were clearing peat from a pond at Windover Farms, a housing development near Titusville, Florida. A road was planned to cross the pond. Backhoe operator Steve Vanderjagt noticed objects that looked like round rocks emerging from the peat. They were human skulls. Vanderjagt told his supervisor, and the discovery was reported to the sheriff. A medical examiner determined that the remains were prehistoric. Archaeologist Glen Doran later recalled Vanderjagt's explanation: "you don't find round rocks in a peat bog like this."
Developers Jack Eckerd and Jim Swann stopped work at the pond, and Swann contacted Florida State University. The developers had two bones recovered by the backhoe radiocarbon dated. The results were 7,210 and 7,320 radiocarbon years before present (BP), showing that the burials were thousands of years old. Eckerd and Swann changed their plans and routed the road away from the pond.
Two years after the discovery, Doran and archaeologist David Dickel of Florida State University began excavating the pond. They directed three field seasons, beginning in 1984, 1985 and 1986. Work started in mid-August each year and continued into December or January. The team excavated one area of the pond in the first season, two more in the second and another two in the third.
Before the team could reach the burials, it had to control the water. The bones lay at least below the surface of the peat at the bottom of the pond, beneath of water. Archaeologists used a network of about 160 well points around the pond to lower the water table. Workers then removed the wet peat with shovels and hand tools. One of the lead archaeologists compared digging it to digging chocolate mousse underwater.
About half the pond was excavated. The rest was left undisturbed for future investigation.
The construction work and archaeological excavations yielded remains representing at least 168 people. Researchers identified 58 individuals among the bones in peat displaced by the backhoe. Roughly 100 burials remained undisturbed, with the skeletons' bones still largely in their original anatomical positions.
Deposition More than 7,000 years ago, Indigenous hunter-gatherers buried their dead in Windover Pond, near Titusville in east-central Florida. Archaeologists identified five or six distinct burial episodes spread over approximately 1,000 years during the Archaic period. Archaeologist Glen Doran reconstructed the burial process as people wading into the shallow water around the pond's edges, scraping aside the soft peat and placing a body in the hollow. He later suggested that the bodies were completely enclosed in peat, with about covering them.
Most bodies were laid on their left sides, with their arms and legs bent towards the torso and their heads pointing west. Only three people were found with their bodies extended. Some were wrapped in woven plant-fibre cloth, sometimes together with grave goods. Wooden stakes driven through the wrappings into the peat held the bodies in place beneath the water. The preservation of brain tissue suggests that burial took place promptly, within 24 to 48 hours of death.
The burials appear to have taken place mainly during summer and early autumn. Most fruits identified with the bodies ripen between July and October. Growth rings in pine stakes from six burials support this seasonal pattern. Five stakes had been cut in August or September, or later in the year, while the sixth may have been cut in late June or July.
Researchers suggested that the people who used Windover may have moved elsewhere during winter and spring, burying their dead at another location. Alternatively, changes in the pond's water level may have made underwater burial possible only during the wetter summer and early autumn months.
Condition The preservation state of the bones varied widely. Stojanowski, Seidemann and Doran scored 80 features on each skeleton as either present or deteriorated. The overall score for the skeletons examined was 53%, which the authors describe as "fairly well-preserved". There was no significant difference in the preservation scores between sexes, by age, or between skeletons in which brain matter was preserved and those in which it was not. There was a significant difference in preservation scores based on the weight of the bone, with the cranium and long limb bones (femur, radius, ulna, and tibia) being the best preserved, and the scapula and sternum least preserved. There was also a significant difference in the preservation of brain matter based on the condition of the cranium. Accordingly, the craniums of children, being smaller and thinner than those of adults, were less likely to contain preserved brain matter.
Grave goods
Tools and artifacts Numerous other artifacts, such as atlatls and projectile points, were also found at Windover.Doran, Dickel & Newsom 1990 The occupants of Windover hunted animals, fished, and gathered plants.
There is a gender disparity in the distribution of some grave goods. Artifacts found only in the graves of adult males include perforators or punches made from antlers, atlatl components, a bone needle, gouges or burnishers made from the ulnas of deer, hollow-point awls, stone projectile points, gravers or burnishers made from mammal teeth, and shark-tooth drills. Artifacts found in the graves of adult females and children, but not adult males, include barbed antler projectile points, bird-bone tubes, gravers or scrapers made from shark teeth, shell necklaces, and containers made of turtle shell. Hamlin suggests that the antler projectile points were used to hunt small mammals, reptiles and fish, while stone projectile points and atlatls were used for hunting large mammals, that the hollow-point awls were used to make and mend nets, and that the bird-bone tubes and turtle-shell containers were used for dispensing medicine. Children and teenagers were buried with more grave goods than were adults, indicating the high value placed on children.
Shell objects Shell beads and necklaces were found at Windover Pond, but other shell objects were scarce. Archaeologist Christine Hamlin found that shell necklaces accompanied adult women and children, but not adult men, in the burials she studied.
One shell had been shaped into a cup. Another had been worked to remove the animal's meat. The remaining shells showed no signs of alteration and came from disturbed soil, so archaeologists could not tell whether they had been placed with the dead. Archaeologist Glen Doran noted that the scarcity of shell artifacts at Windover was consistent with other Florida sites of the Archaic period. Shell objects became more common in later Florida traditions.
Textiles and other perishables Thirty-seven of the graves contained woven fabrics which demonstrate relatively complex weaving technique and indicate that the bodies had been wrapped for burial. In the second (1986) and third (1987) excavation seasons at Windover 87 perishable fiber (textile and cordage) pieces from 67 individual items were recovered. The items were degraded and very fragile, and required extensive and elaborate processing and storage to render them suitable for examination. The items included pieces of cordage and textiles.
Textiles from the Windover site exhibit six different weaving patterns. Almost all of the textiles had closely spaced paired or trebled S twist wefts and simple or diagonal twining. One specimen used open spaced paired S twist and Z twist wefts with simple twining, and one used simple plaiting (plain weave). Ten cords were twisted from two Z spun plies that are S twisted. One of the cords has S spun plies that were Z twisted. Two of the cords were braided using three strands.
Almost all of the fiber artifacts were made of palm leaves, probably from the cabbage palm, although saw palmetto leaves may have also been used. The warps in some of the textiles may have been from yucca plants. The one piece with an open weave was made from a kind of grass.
Fine plain woven fabrics (ten strands per cm) may have been used for inner garments, possibly resembling tunics, while more complex woven fabrics may have been used for ponchos, blankets and matting.
Bags and containers A couple of the surviving fabric items appear to have been bags. The better preserved example was globular, measuring , with an opening across. Its selvage, or finished edge, was made by folding the lengthwise strands back by 180° and working them into the fabric. This left a passage for a drawstring. The bag held the skeleton of a newborn and was buried with a child about 11 years old.