Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Before modern construction a complex of six burial mounds occupied this location. They were built by the ancestors of the prehistoric Ais tribe, a group who occupied the Cape Canaveral area at the time of European contact. Based on pottery styles and the presence of European materials discovered here, the age of the mounds in this complex ranges from AD 600 to the 16th century. In the 1930s, Dr. George Woodbury, under the direction of the Smithsonian Institute’s Bureau of Ethnology, the Peabody Museum, initiated a series of archaeological investigations into several American Indian mound sites near here. With the help of local laborers provided by the New Deal’s Civil Works Administration, excavations on the properties belonging to the Carter and Fuller families revealed the remains of more than 100 individuals that included men, women, and children. Along with these burials, dozens of ornamental and utilitarian artifacts made of bone, shell, and stone were recovered. Many of the artifacts are housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. and at the Peabody Museum in Massachusetts.