The result was different from desert preservation and from cold-region preservation: the peat environment maintained biological materials in a chemically altered but structurally recognizable state.

Wood, bone, antler, plant fiber, animal tissue — all of these materials were present when the pond was excavated.

Each had been altered by thousands of years in the peat, but each retained enough of its original structure to be identified, analyzed, and in many cases conserved.

And in some of the skulls, something remained that made Windover unlike any site previously excavated in the Western Hemisphere.

The Technology Of Survival — Tools And Artifacts From A World Without Metal