UCF students recover 6,000-year-old artifacts at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – While rocket scientists are looking up, anthropologists at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station are looking below ground.

A trove of artifacts — including shell tools, bone tools, pottery and spears from the Cape’s earliest inhabitants — was recently uncovered by students from the University of Central Florida.

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Space Launch Delta 45 on Facebook posted several pictures of the archeological dig, which started off as a ground-penetrating radar survey of two graves.

No human bones were recovered, however, but plenty of evidence of the early inhabitants’ diet were discovered.

“We have thousands of fragments of animal bones such as drum fish, shark, turtle, deer, etc. that tells us what the prehistoric inhabitants ate. We also have shellfish,” 45th Space Wing Cultural Resource Manager Tom Penders told News 6 in an email.

He said some artifacts date back roughly 6,000 years to the Late Archaic Period.

According to Penders, there are about 100 archaeological sites throughout Cape Canaveral Space Force Station property.

“This includes historic cemeteries, burial mounds, missile and airplane crash sites, homesteads, the lighthouse site, etc. Last year at the Penny Site we found a previously unrecorded sand burial mound,” Penders said.

Previous reporting by News 6 has shown this collaboration between UCF, USF and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station has provided students with valuable hands-on experience.

Penders told the 45th Space Wing after anthropology students conduct reports on the sites, they go on to present their findings at conferences, according to the Facebook post.