Bone Needles From a 13,800-Year-Old Alaska, USA, Camp Are the Oldest in the Western Hemisphere

Archaeologists in interior Alaska found eight bone needle fragments that they describe as the oldest needles in the Western Hemisphere. They came from a camp called Shég’ Xdaltth’í, about 34 miles (55 km) southeast of Fairbanks, where people first lived about 13,800 years ago. Elders from the Alaska Native community named the site, and the name means “They Were There” in an Athabascan language. Kelly Graf of the University of Kansas led the study, published in Science Advances on 14 October 2026.

Needles, a hearth and an earth oven

Earlier eyed needles in the Americas came only from Paleoindian sites in temperate North America. The Alaska camp also held a hearth, a small pit and a stain where a wooden post once stood. The team calls these the likely remains of a lean-to or an early tent house, and describes it as the earliest potential dwelling in North America. Nearby, an earth oven full of charcoal and animal bones probably slow-cooked meat for a large group. Other finds include stone tools and an antler pendant. People used the site off and on for roughly a thousand years.

A bigger camp than expected

Graf said the team expected a few hearths and instead found a base camp with tens of thousands of artifacts. Diamond-shaped stone tools resemble those from northern Siberia, and obsidian came from a source hundreds of miles to the northwest. The site also held bones from more than a dozen wolf-like animals. The team suggests the people may have owned dogs, but that link is circumstantial.

What remains uncertain

The dwelling is a potential case, since the evidence is a hearth, a pit and a post stain and not a standing structure. The team is also unsure whether people moved back and forth between Asia and the Americas. Graf noted that Alaska is large and remote, and researchers have studied only a few small areas in depth.

Sources: Graf et al., Science Advances (14 October 2026); Live Science, 16 October 2026.