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Archaelogists study new digs for Heathrow airport

The building of a new terminal at Heathrow airport is providing an unexpected trove of information about the people inhabiting this expanse of land, going back to the hunter gatherers of the stone age 8,000 years ago.

A team of about 80 archaeologists has been working alongside the construction teams preparing the 100-hectare site, where Heathrow airport's fifth terminal will be built.

The archaeologists have found Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, medieval and later remains as well as traces of stone age culture.

The researchers have identified 80,000 archaeological objects including 18,000 pieces of pottery, 40,000 pieces of worked flint and the only wooden bowl found dating to the Middle Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago.

Shedding new light on the development of farming, the archaeologists found that field boundaries laid down as early as 2,000 BC continued to be shown on maps in the 20th century.

The excavations have shown that agriculture on established sites beginning around 2,000 BC dates back at least 500 years earlier than previously estimated, according to Ken Walsh, the director of the project.

The excavation looked at a prehistoric 4km pathway about 20m wide and flanked by ditches. It appeared to have had a religious significance since the first field boundaries ran around it and not across it, as an apparent mark of respect.

But during the Middle Bronze Age, from 1,500 BC, field boundaries were created across the path, a sign that it was no longer venerated.

Access to the local rivers for peoples livestock also became harder because it would mean driving them across others land, so waterholes were dug instead. These then became the focus of religious rituals, with important objects such as pottery and wooden objects placed in them as a sign of their religious significance.

Two long-established units, Oxford Archaeology and Wessex Archaeology, formed a joint venture called Framework Archaeology to work at the site amid the noise and fumes of the worlds busiest international airport.

The project was unusual in the way that it integrated the archaeological dig and the commercial development of the site, which took place simultaneously rather than waiting for the excavation to be completed first.

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