A TEAM of archaeologists may have uncovered what was an ancient home, used by the builders of Avebury stone circle, during a three-week dig of the site.

Experts from the National Trust in Swindon joined a team from Southampton and Leicester Universities and Allen Environmental Archaeology who are sifting through the soil at a site first discovered 80 years ago by marmalade heir Alexander Keiller.

They have spent three years in preparation for the dig, and the first few days threw up a number of exciting discoveries for the team.

“Avebury’s prehistoric monuments are justly world famous but one of the questions I’m most often asked is where the people who built and used them lived,” said Dr Nick Snashall, the National Trust’s archaeologist for Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.

“This landscape has been studied by antiquaries and archaeologists for almost 400 years, which makes it all the more astonishing that we had no idea where its Neolithic and Bronze Age residents lived or what they did in their daily lives.

“So a few years ago a group of us decided it was about time we changed that and teamed up to form the Between the Monuments Project.

"We’re trying to put the people back into Avebury. It sounds straightforward, but the houses the first farmers built are incredibly rare and difficult to spot.

“Finding stone circles and burial mounds is a doddle in comparison.”

The team sifted through the records at the Avebury museum and Mr Keiller’s trail led them back to the West Kennet Avenue site.

Using his journals and drawings together with modern geophysical survey techniques, they relocated the spot.

After stripping back the turf, the detritus of daily life 5,000 years ago appeared perfectly preserved, including arrowheads, scrapers for working hides and plant materials, flint saws, and pottery.

“It’s quite astonishing, millions of people have visited this site over the years but few of them can have guessed what they were standing on,” said Dr Snashall.

“The finds have been coming up three or four at a time - in clusters.

“It’s as if the people were sitting here working away making arrowheads, scraping skins and carrying out their daily tasks and then they just got up and walked away.”

As well as the ancient artefacts, the team have unearthed the remains of a structure which they think may be an ancient house.

“If this does turn out to be a house we’ll have hit the jackpot,” said Dr Snashall.

“I could count the number of Middle Neolithic houses that have been found on the fingers of one hand.

“This site dates from a time when people are just starting to build the earliest parts of Avebury’s earthworks, so we could be looking at the home and workplace of the people who saw that happening.”