UCF Excavation Reveals Ancient Indigenous Life Beneath Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

Overview

• University of Central Florida students and faculty are digging at the DeSoto site on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a midden that is a layered heap of past household waste.
• The team has recovered the remains of many meals, including turtles, shark, black drum, and coquina clams, pointing to a seafood-heavy diet.
• Hundreds of pottery sherds, conch-shell hammers, shark-tooth knives, and a clear hearth feature show daily cooking and toolmaking at the site.
• A complete shark spine turned up beside a large object that may be a fossil or whale bone, and researchers say the unidentified piece has stumped them.
• Samples will go to outside labs for radiocarbon dating and further analysis to fix the site’s dates and test how largely local diets sometimes included imported foods such as ground corn.