13,800-year-old camp in Alaska shows cultural link across the Bering Land Bridge

In brief 3 key points

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• Ice Age camp in interior Alaska yielded more than 80,000 finds.
• Its stone point form also occurs at sites of the same age in Russia.
• The site is not Beringia's oldest, but its oldest layer is unusually well preserved.

Archaeologists working in interior Alaska have described a camp that people used around 13,800 years ago. At that time Asia and North America were still joined by land. The site, Shég' Xdaltth'í', has produced more than 80,000 finds. Its stone points have a distinctive shape that also occurs at sites of the same age in Russia.

The team published its results in Science Advances on 14 October 2026, according to the Spanish edition of Gizmodo. Archaeologist Kelly Graf of the University of Kansas leads the excavations near the Tanana River. The site has been the focus of a multi-disciplinary study since 2016. Its name means "they were there" in an Athabascan language.

Three occupations over about a thousand years

The researchers identified three periods of occupation, dated to about 13,800, 13,000 and 12,700 years ago. All three fall at the end of the last Ice Age. The oldest layer produced a particularly varied set of remains. The authors describe its record as "unparalleled for this age in Beringia".

Beringia is the land that linked Siberia and Alaska when sea levels were much lower. Large amounts of water were locked up in glaciers. Animals and people could move between the two continents. As the last glaciation ended, rising seas drowned most of it.

The oldest occupation yielded stone tools, tools made of bone and a wide range of animal remains. The excavators also found well-preserved activity areas, places where people carried out particular tasks. Animals identified at the site include bison, mammoth, horse and caribou.

One area held a stone anvil, hammering tools and many broken bison bones. The researchers think people cracked the bones to get at the fatty marrow. They also found a large earth oven, which was probably used to cook food slowly.

There are signs of a possible dwelling as well. This suggests the site was a base camp. It was probably more than a brief stop for passing hunters.

The same point shape on both sides of the land bridge

The most distinctive finds are diamond-shaped stone points made to be fixed to a shaft. The paper calls the form unique. The same form occurs at sites of the same age west of the Bering Land Bridge, in present-day Russia. The authors see this as "an important trans-Beringian cultural link".

The team assigns the site to the Nenana Complex, an early archaeological culture known from interior Alaska. According to the paper, Shég' Xdaltth'í' is the earliest known Nenana Complex occupation east of the land bridge.

Not the oldest site in Beringia

The site is not the oldest in Beringia. There is evidence of people in the Americas before 13,800 years ago. The find does not show that its occupants were the first to arrive.

The authors write that Beringia's archaeological record remains poorly understood. In their view, the site reveals important information about how people arrived and settled in this far northern region at the end of the Ice Age.

Sources (2)

Peer-reviewed paperfrom University of Kansas

• Descubren en Alaska un campamento de hace 13.800 años que podría revelar cómo llegaron los primeros humanos a América (es.gizmodo.com)
• Human dispersal across the Bering Land Bridge (BLB) was a key event in the peopling of the Americas, but Beringia's archaeological record remains poorly understood. In response, the Shég' Xdaltth'í' s (PubMed)

Paper: Science Advances, 14 October 2026

Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars

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beringiafirst americansalaskastone toolsice age

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