Researchers in Alaska have discovered rare artifacts connecting prehistoric communities on either side of the famous Bering Land Bridge far earlier than previously believed.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers describe an astounding amount of archaeological material unearthed over more than a decade at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’, a 13,800-year-old archaeological site in interior Alaska. Most notably, they discovered diamond-shaped projectile points that have previously only been found in two archaeological sites on the other side of the Berring Straight, in Russia.

This points to a connection spanning the famous bygone land bridge. These findings suggest that traces of an even older human presence in Alaska than previously believed might be waiting to be discovered.

The study is the result of more than a decade of work. “There’s just so much stuff,” Kelly Graf, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, told Gizmodo. “As soon as we knew how cool it was, in the first few years, we wanted to be able to write a paper about it. But we were like, ‘No, we need to do this right.’”

Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ is close to Fairbanks, Alaska, and what sets it apart is how paleo-Indigenous people would have spent their time there. Many other known sites in Alaska from the same time period were short-lived “special task” camps, like hunting camps, so archaeologists have been on the lookout for a “base camp”—essentially a larger group’s longer-term headquarters with evidence of daily life, as opposed to a single use site.

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