An archaeologist’s dream can be a developer’s nightmare. That’s definitely been the case in North Carolina, as the builders of the new Bridge View neighborhood along the intercostal waterway near Cedar Point uncovered ancient bones while trying to construct a new housing development.

Now, the fate of what the acting state archeologist calls the most significant find he’s seen in the state in the past 30 years sits in a political battle, according to the television station WRAL.

The crews first found bones. But as archeologists took over the site, they uncovered an additional 2,000 artifacts, including evidence of longhouses, fish drying racks, and ritual sites that all point to an early Native American village.

“In the [European] contact period, it could have been a part of the Powhatan Confederation—the Indians that were met by the Jamestown settlers,” Chris Southerly, acting state archeologist, told WRAL, adding that the site has a rich history of multiple Native American groups converging for cross-cultural interactions.

But some in the North Carolina legislature are more focused on the present, pushing an effort to allow the Cedar Point Developers to continue building dozens of waterfront homes on property they paid millions of dollars for. To make it happen, a new bill in the legislature aims to make it tricky for the state’s archeology office to get involved in historically significant finds.