Windover Archaeological Site, Archaeological burial site in Titusville, Florida, US

Windover Archaeological Site is a prehistoric burial ground in a former pond in Brevard County, Florida, where organic material has been preserved in peat for thousands of years. The site itself is not open to the public, but findings are displayed at a nearby museum that documents the scientific importance of this discovery.

In 1982 a backhoe operator clearing peat for a road at Windover Farms spotted human skulls; radiocarbon dates of 7,210 and 7,320 years BP confirmed prehistoric burials. Developers Jack Eckerd and Jim Swann halted work, rerouted the road and funded the first dating. Glen Doran and David Dickel of Florida State University excavated in 1984, 1985 and 1986, recovering at least 168 individuals from five or six burial episodes spanning about 1,000 years.

The site takes its name from Windover Farms, the housing development whose road construction exposed the pond in 1982. Finds are held at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science in Cocoa, including woven fabrics and mats of grass stems that wrapped some of the dead. Burials were made in summer and early autumn, when the pond held little water.

The finds are shown at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science in Cocoa, not at the pond itself, which lies near Titusville about 5 miles from Cape Canaveral and is not open to visitors. About half the pond was excavated; the rest was left undisturbed for future research.

The peat layer preserved brain tissue in more than ninety skulls, allowing researchers to analyze genetic material and trace kinship relationships. Such preservation conditions are extremely rare and make this one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Americas.