OLD VERO SITE
DEAN QUIGLEY
This illustration shows hunters pursuing a mastodon,
one of the great mammals that roamed
Florida during the Ice Age.
Meanwhile, James Kennedy, who had
dug in the area since he was a teenager,
found a fossil bone which was displayed
at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. On it
was an etching of a mammoth — trunk,
tusks and all. If real, it could be one of the
earliest pieces of art in North America. A
scientific evaluation at the University of
Florida concluded, with a Smithsonian
agreement, that it was probably real. However,
and where it is remains unknown, so it is
lost to further scientific scrutiny. Although
the Kennedy bone is unavailable, it revived
interest in the Old Vero Site.
In 2010, the Old Vero Ice Age Sites
Committee was formed by local citizens to
22
Kennedy sold the bone, but to whom
reinvestigate the site. Susan Grandpierre
was the founding chairman; later former
city Councilman Randy Old became chairman.
In 2012, the committee hired Andy
Hemmings, a Florida archaeologist, who
began a study of the site. In 2013, James
Adovasio, a renowned archaeologist at
Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania,
became the principal investigator to direct
an excavation. He is well known for his exploration
at Meadowcroft, a site near Pittsburgh
that helped establish the existence
of man in North America pre Clovis, 16,000
years ago. Mercyhurst and the committee
agreed to share costs and the excavation
began in January 2014.
The Vero site is on Indian River Farms
Water Control District land. Excavation
was limited to January through May. It
then was covered up during the rainy
season so as not to impact the Main
Canal if flooded. After removing 8 feet
of overburden by the canal to get to the
1916 surface, a 60-by-20-foot weatherport
was put in place. Within that area, a crew
of 10 archaeology graduates began the
meticulous excavation under the supervision
of Adovasio and Hemmings. Using
small trowels, they worked inch by inch
through the soil layers. The soil was then
sifted through screens to detect minute
City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
items. Volunteers screened parts of the
nearby overburden pile, jokingly referred
to as Mount Vero.
After the 2015 dig, Mercyhurst decided
it could no longer afford to participate. The
committee applied for and received state
grants and with matching funds from local
donations and in-kind volunteer labor
the excavation continued. Florida Atlantic
University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic
Institute administered the grants and
provided housing for the dig crew.
MORE ITEMS UNCOVERED
The excavation went to a depth of 12
feet below normal ground level, while
encompassing nine soil layers going back
30,000 years. Indications of a human
presence were found such as the stone
flakes from the sharpening of stone tools.
This material is not natural to the Vero
area and had to be carried by humans
from more than 100 miles away. Pieces of
charcoal indicated a possible fire pit. An
8,000-year-old piece of woven material
was uncovered. The presence of saltwater
fish bones showed that humans might
have fished on the then-distant coast. At
the end of the 2016 dig, a bison bone bed
appeared. Near it were bones of an extinct
tapir with the tip of a man-made bone >>
OVIASC
The Old Vero Site is situated between the Indian River County Administration Complex, left, and the Main Canal and the Vero Beach Airport to the right.
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