Tell (archaeology)

In archaeology a tell (borrowed into English from Arabic: تَلّ, tall, "mound" or "small hill")^[1] is an artificial topographical feature, a mound^[a] consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive settlements at the same site, the refuse of generations of people who built and inhabited them and natural sediment.^{[2][3][4][b][c]}

Tells are most commonly associated with the ancient Near East but are also found elsewhere, such as in Southern and parts of Central Europe, from Greece and Bulgaria to Hungary and Spain,^[5][6] and in North Africa.^[2][7][8][9] Within the Near East they are concentrated in less arid regions, including Upper Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant, Anatolia and Iran, which had more continuous settlement.^[10] Eurasian tells date to the Neolithic,^[11] the Chalcolithic and the Bronze and Iron Ages.^[12] In the Southern Levant the time of the tells ended with the conquest by Alexander the Great, which ushered in the Hellenistic period with its own, different settlement-building patterns.^{[citation needed]} Many tells across the Near East continue to be occupied and used today.^[13]

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