Archaeologists have unearthed a 9,000-year-old campsite that may have been frequented by an ancient shaman.

The Middle Stone Age (otherwise known as the Mesolithic) site is located near the spa town of Bad Dürrenberg, Saxony-Anhalt state, in east Germany, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported.

Researchers from the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archeology began excavating the site after the discoveries of a conservationist who had been working in the area.

The volunteer conservationist, Wolfgang Bernhardt, had collected more than 7,000 stone artifacts from the ground surface at the site over five years.

“This is an immense amount of finds for a Mesolithic site and the flint artifacts are of enormous quality,” archaeologist and project leader Jörg Orschiedt told the dpa.