Alaska archaeological site reveals 13,800-year-old base camp

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient base camp in Alaska that may contain the oldest known dwellings and evidence of the earliest domesticated dogs in the Americas. The site, named Shég' Xdaltth'í' (meaning “They were there” in the Athabaskan language), is located approximately 34 miles southeast of Fairbanks.

Excavations at the 13,800-year-old site have yielded thousands of artifacts and fossils. These include stone tools, needles, and bones that potentially belong to the first domesticated dogs on the continent. The findings suggest cultural links across the Bering Land Bridge, a region that once connected northeast Asia to northwest North America during the last Ice Age.

Kelly Graf, a lead author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, noted that the discovery of a full base camp containing tens of thousands of artifacts was a complete surprise, as researchers initially expected to find only smaller hunting remains.