Talk:Tell (archaeology)

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The external link tells less than the article itself. Delete? --Yak 16:30, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

I'm rather doubtful about the claim that the Bulgarian word for a tell is 'mogila'. In Russian (closely related) it simply means 'grave'. --Smack 21:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If you look in a dictionary, it will tell you that mogila is hill or barrow, and of course it is used for barrows as well. You got archaeological sites that are called Mogila, sometimes differentiated as ????????? ??????, selischtschata mogila, like Karanovo (????????? ?????? ?? ?. ????????). The word tell' is used as well (Tell' Poljanitza), but mainly by archaeologists. Sorry, don't know how to get Bulgarian on this page, you can find examples on http://www.clio.uni-sofia.bg/spec/archeo/arheo_404.html, for example. What is Tell in Russian, by the way? --Yak 19:10, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

There is no "magura" in Romanian. It's "măgură" - hill, or "măgura" -- the hill. In Albanian, I think it's "magullë", can anyone confirm? [Dan] 23:13, 13 Aug 2005 (UTC)

A different tell

Isn't there a tell (similar to the tell in poker) in martial arts? 128.6.175.60 20:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

There also is a Wilhelm Tell in literature, maybe there should be a link for disambiguation or something.. --89.51.85.27 14:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I've created Tell (disambiguation) to record other uses of the word. --G Rutter 16:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Tel and Tumulus

I added a link to he:תל but all the interwikis there link to Tumulus in various languages. DVD+ R/W 20:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems like someone on the Hebrew wiki has made a mistake then- as our articles make clear tumuli are grave mounds and tells are settlement remains. --G Rutter 23:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Etymology

Both Chambers and the OED give the etymology of the English word as being from the Arabic, and make no suggestion that the English word is derived from the Hebrew. I have added a reference for this, and removed the Hebrew derivation as I could not find a reference to support the English word being derived from Hebrew. DuncanHill (talk) 21:58, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I readily believe it, it would just help to find out more. It probably entered the English language in the context of Middle East exploration and maybe specifically of archaeology (that's the detail I'm missing: when and in what context), not by studying the Bible, so maybe in the 18th or 19th c. Studying Biblical Hebrew had of course a longer tradition, but less impact in geographical terminology, I guess. Also, Zero0000, the Google Book access is far from irrelevant; there are a) SO many editing mistakes, and b) additional questions, like here, that offering a "black box"-type reference, i.e. "believe me and no need to check it up", is nonsense. So it's far from being an editorial comment. An online source that's always accessible to everyone from everywhere is much, MUCH to be preferred. The OED is fine, if this specific entry is based on more than the already cited source.

I don't know if "tel" with one l is used anywhere outside Israel/Palestine-related literature translated from Hebrew or written in English by Israelis. If my hunch is correct, it's not needed at the beginning of the lead, it must be kept, as I/P archaeology is indeed a big point of int'l interest, but should move further down the text, with the other variations.

"Tall" is, as far as I can tell, a recent Jordanian peculiarity - in the 2000s they've made what seems to be an intentional move away from British transliteration, they probably perceived this as being an "anti-colonial" step, and swapped all the e's and eh's for a's. Lately the Palestinians have been moving in the same direction, be it less consistently, as they don't have a centralised state authority dealing with transliteration (in Jordan the Antiquities Dept pushed it, and they probably got their orders from higher up). Whatever. Or maybe there are regional variations in Arabic pronunciation re. "tell"? That would be interesting to know, but I don't think it's the case. We still don't have any Arabic-speaking editor around who is interested in such matters, or do we? Arminden (talk) 11:33, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I checked this in the OED, and they transcribe the Arabic as tall a decade before the Jordanians 'innovated'. So their proposal, retrospectively, looks very much like a desire to disentangle the orientalist representation of key terms in Western languages. Of course, best practice would be, as you suggest, to 'run this past' (I hate that bureaucratic idiom since I first heard my cousin use it in the 1980s - he'd just got a job in a bureaucracy) an Arabist. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:45, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

OED says "The English spellings with -e- reflect a colloquial Arabic pronunciation". DuncanHill (talk) 12:47, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

And I want to record my objection to describing Chambers 20th Century Dictionary as a "black box" reference. The work is widely available, the very edition I cited can be borrowed on Archive.org. Google Books are not "always accessible to everyone from everywhere" - what someone sees when they click on a Google Book link depends on where they are. Some will see the whole book, some snippets, and some bugger all. A similar problem applies to Hathi Trust. DuncanHill (talk)

@Arminden: Two replies. (1) The transliteration "Tall" was very common in Mandate official sources, much more than "Tell". Both were used for writing Arabic place names in Palestine. There is nothing Jordanian about "Tall". However, if it was an original Hebrew place name, they used "Tel". The reason I believe the dictionaries that the English usage is borrowed from the Arabic is that the Arabic practice is very old (early Ottoman at least) whereas (correct me if I'm wrong) this naming style only occurs in modern Hebrew. Maybe Tel Aviv was the first. (2) It is a basic principle of sourcing that WP:SOURCEACCESS is not a criterion. If you write that you cannot see it online, that is only a statement about you and not about the source. So I stick to my description "editorial comment". Zero^talk 13:32, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zero0000: Thanks. Maybe it's that tell made it much more often into the books I came across, even if tall was as common in the Mandate-period maps? Mandate authorities were working in a time when many standards were yet to be established. I don't know. Didn't it stabilise to 'tell' in the 40s? I saw the written instructions in Jordan and drew my own conclusions, maybe a bit too hurriedly, but I'd be surprised. As to "editorial comment": I understand it as "subjective comment", and it was made in the good-faith presumption that it is objective and useful to the user. We've had that longer exchange on my talk-page and I'll stop adding this type of comment, except where Google Books clearly states "no preview", where I still believe it's intrinsic to the title and not regional or temporary. Do we agree on that? Btw, we can check it right away: Nishidani has posted us two access codes to a book, see "Wendy Matthews" further down this page. My old desk computer can't do anything with the Chinese website, but I've tried the ISBN. Google Books has "no preview" for both editions (2018, 2nd ed.; and 2020). Do you get the same? Arminden (talk) 14:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

yeah- Sorry for that link fuckup, but you know me, dodgy at the best of times. I'd reckon you could get her article from some whiz at the wiki ref desk dialing up this to snap off a wiki-user copy?Nishidani (talk) 14:31, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Nishida-san, no problem, I can do well without for now - and the fault is all mine, my desktop PC is on its way out. The hardware is in perfect shape, but it's been cut off from updates and it's closing down, one programme at a time. Chinese characters show up as squares. Not even Google Translate can help out. A wiki-user copy? Never heard of such a thing, that would be the cheapest way to information since the invention of the lockpick. PS: I've tried writing to Ms Matthews, let's see now. Arminden (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Translating from the Japanese. At the Wikipedia Reference Desk, if you ask for a source with the link I provided above, anyone of a dozen wonderful chaps will mail you a copy, which they can access thanks to Wikipedia contracts with an extraordinary number of editing houses and journals. Don't worry about computers going off the blink. Your description of yours reminds me of what happens to persons like myself in the 70s. And if I can work my way round all of the incipient dementia, sore tendons, emphysema threats, and dwindling sharpness of sight (my family, younger and bespectacled has long looked on with jealous incredulity), then you can still keep a dinky computer running. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

To editor Nishidani: To editor Arminden: It is not the Reference Desk you want, it is the Resource Exchange. The folks there are pretty good. Anyway, I will look at "Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology" later today. Zero^talk 00:25, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Arminden: No, I don't agree to "No Preview" being mentioned. It privileges Google as a source and there is no reason to believe it is a permanent property of a book or even consistent across Google sites or Google users. Remember that different countries have different copyright laws so it is perfectly likely that Google sometimes chooses to provide a preview depending on the IP of the viewer. Hathitrust does that and advertises the fact. Also, this is not a local question but one with wide-ranging implications across Wikipedia. If you will want to proceed, I suggest you try raising the issue at WT:Citing sources. Zero^talk 00:34, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Previews do differ considerably between countries, but I believe at the say-so of the publisher, not google. It's their copyrighted material. Johnbod (talk) 02:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I asked you folks to check that one specific case. Is it "no preview" in all of your particular countries? One case does not prove a rule, but it helps, so thanks to those who are willing to check.

Zero, thank you for the resource thing, much appreciated.

And also to you, I get it, I'm not a mule. I thought it helps, if it doesn't, I have no other motivation to push anything. Just the "giving preference to Google" thing I don't buy. We indicate the G.B. URL by virtue of a Wiki template because...? Yes, it's the default source for books. De facto, our old "thing". I didn't set Google on that pedestal, nor do I support Google Inc. I leave it to the authorities in Brussels and D.C., or to Don Qixote, to fight that one out. Arminden or Zero won't bring them down. My issue is that editing articles sourced on invisible texts is impossible. And that quite often, by playing around a bit with GB country endings, I can get to everything others have quoted, and get stuck exactly where others have. Except for older edits, where by now one gets consistent "no preview" or "snippet view" announcements. So a change of policy by the (c) holder is the most likely conclusion, especially since certain publishers are involved in many of these cases. Can I prove it? No. Am I allowed to think and extrapolate? Yes. And ask for your opinion, and even more so: for information on whether anyone knows anything for a fact. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 10:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I understand that it's frustrating to work with these references if you don't have easy access to a library, though in our defence if you do have that access, it's difficult to ignore good sources that are right in front of you because they might not be on Google Books.

Regardless, while it might be difficult to verify information cited to paywalled sources, it's impossible to verify information not cited to anything at all, so it's a little disappointing that this discussion is happening alongside the introduction of unsourced material to an article which previously was not missing any citations. Can we please focus on making sure basic assertions of fact such as when and where tells are found, and how they formed, are sourced at all before we worry about WP:SOURCEACCESS? – Joe (talk) 11:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Tel Aviv

Is Tel Aviv a tell, or was it named after one? Stonemason89 (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not a real tell, however the very phrase "Tel Aviv", which is derived from the Bible (Ezekiel 3 15), means (in Hebrew): "Tell of spring". 84.228.29.68 (talk) 21:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The name Tel Aviv derives from Herzl book "Altneuland" / The Old New Land, that was translated into Hebrew as "Tel Aviv". Tel represents the "Old", Aviv, means "spring", represents the "new". It is also a name of a Jewish community in Babylon on the times of Ezkiel. Indeed, it is not a real Tell, though in its area there are several Tells, such as Tell_Qasile and Tell Kudadi. https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%9C_%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%93%D7%90%D7%93%D7%99 --Noavic (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

höyük (Turkey)

I wonder if the turkish term höyük (like in Çatalhöyük, Tille Höyük (-> tell), Alaca Höyük - sometimes also called hüyük in place names) is more similar to Tell or to Kurgan?! It may be a mixture of both because the purpose vary between settlement and burial; Tell comes from southeast (arabic/hebrew) and kurgan is turkic origin but not used in place names... --katpatuka (talk) 16:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

List of tells kind of pointless in the article

Having a list of tells in the body of the article is somewhat pointless. Tells are quite numerous. You can't really call it tells of note or noteworthy tells, but as it stands it this doesn't belong here. There could be a Wikipedia category called Tells though. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 11 Shevat 5775 03:31, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree. No problem with removing this list.--Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:57, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

All righty, I've started the massive task of creating the Tell category. I expect that it will have several hundred sites when it's done. In the meantime, I think we should keep the list in the article, but only include the best known tells. I think you can't use notable or other such terms according to WP:WTA, so what would be a good way to do this? Examples of tells maybe? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 16 Adar 5775 22:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Examples of, major, typical, significant, important. Any of those, but not "list" which implies completeness. Where the name begins with "Tell" you should I think sort on the rest of the name. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, list is definitely not the term to use here. As you said, it implies that paltry collection is the whole bunch. I noticed that sorting problem too. How do you make it sort by the second word in the name in some cases if that's possible? Obviously in cases where you have a dash after Al, there's not much you can do. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 16 Adar 5775 23:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Like this, with Hot Cat (on Preferences), or not. Johnbod (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Saw that and started doing it in a few places. A good place to look for more tells is in Cities of the Ancient Near East and also see what links to the Tells page. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 16 Adar 5775 23:59, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

It would be nice to have an annotated list, with the country, approximate date, and anything particularly interesting about the tell. Siuenti (talk) 23:11, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

We could do that, but we'd have to keep it short of course. Most of the sites there are there because they're of archaeological significance (though I do have a bias towards Tel Kabri and Tel Megiddo as I work at those two sites, but they're significant sites). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 16 Adar 5775 23:24, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Why not delete the list, and replace it with a picture gallery showing the diversity of sizes and shapes of tells? Until the text of this article gets expanded significantly, that might give more information than a biased list. BTW someone mentioned that he was looking for a ref to the distribution of tells beyond the NE, I think it's in Wilkinson "Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East", I'll try and see if I can find it and add it to the article.--Zoeperkoe (talk) 11:13, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I kind of like that idea more so long as we can also give them wee descriptions. That was me and I think I've used that book before for something else. It's a ridiculously wide and tall book if I remember correctly. If you could, that would be great! Maybe email it to me as well because I think I need that cite for a nota bene in the Kabri article. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 17 Adar 5775 13:55, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Meaning of the original Arabic word tell

Nowhere in the article there is a mention of the fact that the meaning of the Arabic 'tell' is simply a 'hill'. In English, I think that this word is used strictly for Iraqi archeological mounds and probably adopted by the earlier archeologists like Leonard Woolley (see his book: Sumerians) who worked in Iraq. 5.42.198.210 (talk) 16:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

In Hebrew, it exists in the same Archaeological meaning. Israel is full of Tells. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noavic (talk • contribs) 15:43, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, that meaning of the original Arabic word is in the first sentence of the lead... Best, --Zoeperkoe (talk) 17:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Tel

Tel has been added to the lead section as a bolded alternative name several times, most recently today by Johnbod [1]. Saying that tel often appears in placenames transliterated from Hebrew is certainly more accurate than implying the English word tell derives from Hebrew [2]; the sources are unanimous that it was loaned from Arabic, decades before Modern Hebrew existed. But I'm still not sure tel belongs there. If we're including the Hebrew cognate, why not also khirbet (Arabic), höyük (Turkish), tepe (Persian/Turkish), or chogha (Persian)? They all mean roughly the same thing and are also common in transliterated placenames. Or other variants such as tal or til? Because this article is about the phenomenon of an anthropogenic mound—which is called a tell in English—not placenames. – Joe (talk) 14:51, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

There are enough "Tel Foo" names in Category:Tells to justify it, imo, plus "tel" redirects here, via a disam page, hence the bolding. The same is true of "Tepe", so that could be added. Höyük goes to a single place, and khirbet and chogha to their own list/disam articles, which should of course be mentioned here, at the least in See also. Johnbod (talk) 14:57, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I've added an etymology section so this doesn't crowd the lead. – Joe (talk) 06:52, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

If we can get access to Wendy Matthews,'Tells in Archaeology,' Claire Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer 2014, it would help improve the quality of our sources. Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Thanks for the recent improvements. I've emailed you a copy of that source. – Joe (talk) 15:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Joe. Very good of you. Give me a day or two and I'll add the material there.Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Can't seem to get a direct link to the pèage numerated article in that book so I'll use the following:

Wendy Matthews 'Tells in Archaeology,' in : Smith C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer http://doi-org-443.webvpn.fjmu.edu.cn/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_1512 ISBN 978-3-030-30016-6 Nishidani (talk) 22:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

---

Copied & expanded from above, at "Etymology", where it might be misplaced: I don't know if "tel" with one l is used anywhere outside Israel/Palestine-related literature translated from Hebrew or written in English by Israelis. If that's correct, it's not needed at the beginning of the lead; it must be kept, as I/P archaeology is indeed a big point of int'l interest, but should move further down the text, with the other variations.

N.B.: there is a practice in I/P tell archaeology to use the Arabic toponym, usually from the SWP or alike, with Tell in the beginning, and only change to Tel-Something if the site is positively identified with a biblical or otherwise historically known city, like Dan, Megiddo, Gezer. So Tell el-Qadi to Tel Dan, Tell el-Mutesellim to Tel Megiddo, Tell el-Jezari to Tel Gezer. This is the rule with Israeli archaeologists, but not all non-Israeli ones go along with it, for either practical or ideological reasons. There are enough exceptions, I guess where the Government Naming Committee was in a hurry and came up with other sources of inspiration, usually the Arabic name, before any identification was possible. See for instance Khirbet el-Muqanna to Tel Miqne and not Tel Ekron, and Tell es-Safi to Tel Zafit, but not (yet) to Tel Gath. In this category, there is a tendency toward re-renaming the mounds, either step by step ("Tel Miqne-Ekron"), or in one go, like Tel Gath, which is gaining traction. If you find my conclusions worth being included in the article, please try to find some quotable sources – I'm sorry, but I won't be able to invest more time in this. Arminden (talk) 13:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If you look at Category:Tells (archaeology) (as a rough measure), Tel is the second most common spelling variant after Tell. But I think we should be pragmatic here, since the compromise reached above (tell and tel in the lead, with a detailed explanation of etymology and related terms in its own section) seems to have stopped the I/P-motivated edit warring over the lead which had been going on for years before. – Joe (talk) 11:14, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

This sounds reasonable to me. Edit peace in an article is a great thing to have... Btw, given that tel is only used in Israel whereas tell is used in Syria, Iraq and Jordan, which are all much larger countries, we can be pretty sure that there are way more tells than tels... ;) -- Zoeperkoe (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

No good. At least there should be

1. some source using "tel" quoted in the lead if we were to accept it (as of now, all sources - Shaw, Negev & Gibson, and Chapmam - use tell, none uses the Hebrew-inspired tel, not even Negev; Kirkpatrick and Matthews are not online), and
2. it must be clarified that "tel" is strictly used by Israeli authors, and if used rigurously, only for positively identified biblical sites where the Hebrew "tel" is justified, and only in conjunction with the biblical Hebrew name, not the modern Arabic one.

It's not about avoiding edit-warring, it's about being correct. "Tel" is justified and widely used, but - only in the context indicated above, and this must be clearly stated. An academic approach is required, not a Solomonic one. Even if it means formulating a bit longer. Brevity isn't all. Arminden (talk) 15:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Done. Prof. Oded Borowski is RS, as is BAS. If someone wants to integrate it higher up in the lead, it's fine with me.

The change of name practice, from Arabic place name "Tell + XY" to Hebrew "Tel + biblical name", once identified, should be sourced and added too (for instance Tell el-Mutesellim to Tel Megiddo, Tell el-Qadi to Tel Dan, etc.). Arminden (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Tells occupied today

@Joe Roe: You placed a cn template on the statement about tells being occupied today. No problem with that, but I've got no idea how to source that to a single publication. I know it to be true (for the areas with which I am familiar) from the many reports I read and sites I visited, but how to translate that to a citation... I'll look in some of the books I've got lying around, maybe it is actually mentioned somewhere... Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:02, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

This ASOR blog might actually be a very interesting source for modern use of tells. Somewhere deeper in the article is a reference to modern occupation at archaeological sites. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:15, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. There is still the apparent contradiction between this statement and what Arminden added though – that tells went out of use in the Hellenistic period (also uncited). I suspect both are true in the sense that the "continuing occupation" you refer to is actually usually people building modern structures on top of long-abandoned sites, which is what the ASOR blog also suggests. I'm struggling to think of an example of a tell that was truly occupied continuously, as a settlement, since prehistory, because usually people in later eras didn't find giant hills with no water appealing unless they were building a castle. But that's also based on personal experience. It is difficult to square this kind of thing when you have to work backwards from assertions to sources. – Joe (talk) 08:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

It might be that "occupation" is the wrong word and we should phrase it like "continue to be in use". I think that what Arminden mentions is something that has been shown by the research of Tony Wilkinson (and those that followed after him). I might have a source on that. But problem again is that this is not generally true for the entire area where tells are attested. On the other hand, tells being unoccupied for long periods of time and then being reoccupied is something that happened in the past as well, so this is not a reason to leave out modern occupation/use. Similarly, tells in the past were also not exclusively used for occupation; there's plenty evidence that tells were used as burial grounds, as a source for mud bricks, camping ground for pastoralists, and so forth, interspersed between the periods where there was permanent occupation (or at the same time at different parts of the tell). We might end up with something like saying that tells are loci of human activity in the landscape where occupation was an important, but not the only, part of that activity. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Just to give an example; is it that different if a site was occupied in the Parthian period, abandoned, re-occupied in the Ottoman period until today (so a gap of ~1600 years) versus a site that was occupied in the Ubaid period and then re-occupied in the Akkadian period (a ~2000 yr gap)? I agree that the ASOR blog is not the best source, as it only focuses on really recent activity. I guess you really have to dig into survey reports to get an idea of how many modern villages are still on top of tells. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Folks, tell settlements have a certain definition. It normally implies a specific kind of society and settlement pattern: restricted settlement area over longer periods, rebuilding if needed, often with fortifications marking the built-up area. You can always pitch a tent or build a condo, or fifty, on a tell and move in with your extended family & friends, enjoying the view: that doesn't make yours a tell settlement. Times when isolated houses are the only findings on a tell are considered gaps in tell habitation. Tell-type settlements appear in certain periods, and disappear in region-specific periods (Hellenism in ancient Palestine, apparently Roman period around Homs, much earlier in some regions of Romania and Bulgaria). If nowadays or, say, in the Middle Ages you have sprawling villages and towns also stretching over tells, this doesn't create tell settlements, although it might either add or remove (truncate) authentic tell layers from the mound. There was a period-specific way of re-inhabiting only a small, specific area and sometimes protecting it with walls that made a tell a tell. We still have churches and mosques on hilltops, or even fortified monasteries, sometimes dominating a city, but that doesn't make such a hilltop an acropolis either: that's also a period-specific, culture-specific term.

I don't find anywhere the 'tell' definition mentioning any of this, but read enough dig reports and it becomes obvious: a proper tell layer implies dense habitation, often ramparts limiting the built-up area and giving the tell its shape. Which is limited to the periods between Neolithic and Iron Age or whatever other region-specific period. In the case of large ancient tell-creating cities, there is a lower city and an upper city, which leave a higher small mound within the larger, lower mound. After destruction of cities in the period X, archaeologists might speak of meager findings or habitation remains from the period X+1, but not of a stratum per se.

In ancient Palestine, Hellenism brings a new type of city-building, which "descends" from the easier-to-protect mound, although the tell might still be used as an acropolis or for other types of construction, but the term tell ceases to be used. See Hippodamian grid plan for Greek and Roman new settlements, which come along with new economic, fiscal, and transportation concepts, which can move the focus on new hubs, or make settlements within the realm open up their boundaries.

Yes, the definition is incomplete w/o touching on this, but I guess tell archaeology, being mainly a Middle East affair, was contaminated by Middle Eastern attitudes of pragmatism: you know what a tell is if you have eyes in your head, the rest is hair-splitting. Now I see there are attempts at including large parts of Europe and the world into tell archaeology (Hungary & Transylvania! Plus at least "parallels" on every other continent), so they'll need to get more detail into the definition, otherwise every type of man-generated heap of ruins will claim to be called a tell, and that will water down the concept to a point where it becomes useless. If you find something quotable confirming or contradicting me, please let me know, but I couldn't find any concise quotable sources for this.

Useful material:

• Blanco-González & Kienlin (is in the References), pp. 1, 135. Gives a good idea of why the focus should be on socio-economic aspects, which are decisive in the creation or abandonment of a tell.
• Graham Philip & Jennie Bradbury. "Settlement in the Upper Orontes Valley from the Neolithic to the Islamic Period: an Instance of Punctuated Equilibrium". Syria IV (2016). Search words: tell; Hellenism; Roman. Around Homs, tells remain inhabited throughout the Hellenistic period, but are abandoned under the very active Roman rule, when the central admin. patterns change dramatically. Neolithic findings are sometimes treated simply as "material at future tells", not as part of these, if the Neolithic settlement type is not tell-specific.
• S. Bréhard & A. Bălăşescu. "What's behind the tell phenomenon? An archaeozoological approach of Eneolithic sites in Romania": "In southeastern Europe, the appearance and abandonment of the tell sites varies by areas. The fifth millennium BC is characterized by the appearance of the tell sites in southeastern Romania (and in northeastern Bulgaria....), while in the Carpathian Basin, there is the abandonment of this type of settlement." So radical regional variations just across one mountain range (S Carpathians). Arminden (talk) 11:46, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I haven't encountered that narrow a definition of tells, either in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias I have access to, or in my own work on tells in the Middle East and Europe. The way we use it, it means basically a mound created by human settlement. I don't think it's so new to recognise that they are found in Europe either (there are apparently 161 in Hungary). That's not to say that other definitions aren't out there, but I don't think we should be too restrictive in this article. The socioeconomic changes you talk about are very interesting and sound like the precisely the sort of thing an expanded version of this article could cover, though I would say they are factors that explain the variable distribution of tells, rather than define it. – Joe (talk) 14:07, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Joe here. What Arminden describes is more about the biography of specific (groups of) tells than applicable to every tell. When and why tells were (re)occupied is different throughout the Near East and surrounding areas and such details, as well as details like "must have had city walls" have no place in the lead, I think. But these details are perfectly fine in a more specific section on tell formation or regional differences. Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Changes to the layout of the end matter

I object to the changes made to the headings and layout of the end matter by NSH001, and have reverted them per "bold, revert, discuss". This is covered by WP:REFVAR: users should not change referencing styles based solely on their own personal preferences, but must get consensus on the talk page. Anybody support these changes? NSH001, you are welcome to get a third opinion or start an RFC if you think this matter of style is truly important in the larger scheme of things. Skyerise (talk) 11:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, you're talking about this revert? Which changed the headings over the footnotes? – Joe (talk) 11:32, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. I prefer how it was and the change was not necessary. If others think it's an improvement, that's fine too, but the editor seems to be working to conform multiple articles to some essay which is not binding and such unneeded changes are generally discouraged if there are objections. Skyerise (talk) 11:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes absolutely no difference either way. – Joe (talk) 11:42, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's a distraction from more useful work. I too support the way it was - firstly because I'm against neurotic drive-by changes, 2ndly this is the most common style, & 3rdly because it's the style I prefer. Johnbod (talk) 12:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)