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 (250-acre) 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 mapsin the 20th century.