# Alaska's Shég' Xdaltth'í' site: 13,800-year-old camp with a shelter, an earth oven and bone needles

- Published: 2026-11-11 13:38 UTC
- Section: Science › Research
- Tags: Shég' Xdaltth'í', Bering Land Bridge, Late Pleistocene Alaska, Nenana Complex, hafted biface, Kelly Graf, University of Kansas, Ice Age camp, earth oven, Beringia
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-68bdbe4fdd9f92482a97f3ff_alaska_s_sh/

**Excavations above the Tanana River in interior Alaska found a probable lean-to, an earth oven and sewing tools. The tool form links the camp to sites west of the Bering Land Bridge.**

![Alaska's Shég' Xdaltth'í' site: 13,800-year-old camp with a shelter, an earth oven and bone needles](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/2abafd1bf4b0e843.jpg)
*Earth.com*

A team led by Kelly Graf of the University of Kansas reported results from the Shég' Xdaltth'í' site in interior Alaska in Science Advances. The site has been studied since 2016 and has three archaeological components dated to 13.8, 13 and 12.7 thousand years ago [1]. The study focuses on the oldest component, which the authors describe as a record unparalleled for this age in Beringia [1].

The camp lies on a bluff about 35 meters above the Tanana River, 55 kilometers south-southeast of Fairbanks. The team has opened a single excavation block of 25 square meters. The oldest layer alone has yielded more than 80,000 pieces of stone, bone and charcoal.

## Shelter, oven and bone tools

In the oldest layer the team found an oval of charcoal-stained ground at least 3 meters across, packed with small artifacts and bones. They interpret it as most likely a lean-to opening to the south, with a hearth near the center and a refuse pit beside it. Nearby was an earth oven: a charcoal bed more than 1.2 meters across holding 230 fire-cracked rocks, with a cap of earth.

The layer contains nearly 7,000 bones, mostly fragmented. Protein analysis at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology identified 373 pieces. They came mostly from steppe bison, with mammoth, horse, caribou, hares, foxes, a lynx and several bird species also present. The bone tools include eight fragments of sewing needles, four of them with part of the eye preserved, an awl tip and an antler pendant with a drilled hole. At least 15 bones belong to wolves, and one lower jaw did not match any reference group the team measured it against.

## Link across Beringia

The site holds six finished hafted bifaces, flaked on both faces into a diamond shape, most with a ground stem. The team has not yet examined them for wear, so it does not call them spear points or knives. According to the authors, this form also occurs in coeval sites west of the Bering Land Bridge, and the site is the earliest known Nenana Complex occupation east of it [1]. Graf names the Russian sites Nikita Lake and Berelekh in this context.

All 25 obsidian pieces trace to Batza Téna, about 370 kilometers to the northwest. One rhyolite piece came from Triple Lakes in what is now Denali National Park. The camp has no storage pits or dug-in houses, so the team calls its occupants semi-settled.

Several features extend into the walls of the excavation block, so the lean-to and the oven are only partly uncovered. Identifying the people who made the toolkit will require ancient genomes, the team said.

## Sources

1. [Science Advances](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeh0802)
2. [Earth.com](https://www.earth.com/science/an-ancient-camp-in-alaska-holds-amazing-clues-about-how-the-first-people-traveled-all-the-way-to-north-america)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-68bdbe4fdd9f92482a97f3ff_alaska_s_sh/