Deeply stratified settlements are a distinctive site type featuring prominently in diverse later prehistoric landscapes of the Old World. Their massive materiality has attracted the curiosity of lay people and archaeologists alike. Nowadays a wide variety of archaeological projects are tracking the lifestyles and social practices that led to the building-up of such superimposed artificial hills. However, prehistoric tell-dwelling communities are too often approached from narrow local perspectives or discussed within strict time- and culture-specific debates. There is a great potential to learn from such ubiquitous archaeological manifestations as the physical outcome of cross-cutting dynamics and comparable underlying forces irrespective of time and space.
This volume tackles tells and tell-like sites as a transversal phenomenon whose commonalities and divergences are poorly understood yet may benefit from cross-cultural comparison. Thus, the book intends to assemble a representative range of ongoing theory- and science-based fieldwork projects targeting this kind of sites. With the aim of encompassing a variety of social and material dynamics, the volume’s scope is diachronic – from the Earliest Neolithic up to the Iron Age–, and covers a very large region, from Iberia in Western Europe to Syria in the Middle East. The core of the volume comprises a selection of the most remarkable contributions to the session with a similar title celebrated in the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting held at Barcelona in 2018. In addition, the book includes invited chapters to round out underrepresented areas and periods in the EAA session with relevant research programmes in the Old World. To accomplish such a cross-cultural course, the book takes a case-based approach, with contributions disparate both in their theoretical foundations –from household archaeology, social agency and formation theory– and their research strategies –including geophysical survey, microarchaeology and high-resolution excavation and dating.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Introduction: Learning from Prehistoric Tells: Antonio Blanco-González and Tobias L. Kienlin
• PART 1. THE BUILDING-UP OF TELL MATERIALITY
  • 2. Architectural Phases, Use-life Episodes and Taphonomic Processes in Tell Formation: An Approach to Neolithic Tell Halula (Syria): Miquel Molist, Quim Sisa, Julia Wattez and Anna Gómez-Bach
  • 3. Re-discovering the Neolithic Landscapes of Western Thessaly, Central Greece: Athanasia Krahtopoulou, Charles Frederick, Hector A. Orengo, Anastasia Dimoula, Niki Saridaki, Stella Kyrillidou, Alexandra Livarda and Arnau Garcia-Molsosa
  • 4. The Old Becomes New: Material Culture and Architectural Continuity on an Anatolian Höyük: Sharon R. Steadman and Jennifer C. Ross
  • 5. Moving Bottom-up: The Case Study of Kakucs-Turján (Hungary) and its Implications for Studies of Multi-layered Bronze Age Settlements in the Carpathian Basin: Robert Staniuk, Mateusz Jaeger, Gabriella Kulcsár, Nicole Taylor, Jakub Niebieszczański and Johannes Müller
  • 6. Exploring the Bronze Age Tells and Tell-like Settlements from the Eastern Carpathian Basin. Results of a Research Project: Florin Gogâltan, Alexandra Găvan, Marian A. Lie, Gruia Fazecaș, Cristina Cordoș and Tobias L. Kienlin
  • 7. Talking Trash. Reconstructing Activities, Discard and Abandonment at Late Bronze Age Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria): Victor Klinkenberg
• PART 2. THE SOCIAL LIVES OF TELLS
  • 8. Domestication of Tells: Settlements of the First Farmers in Pelagonia (Macedonia): Goce Naumov
  • 9. Tells (and Flat Sites) as Social Agents: A View from Neolithic Greece: Stella Souvatzi
  • 10. Human Activities on a Late Neolithic Tell-like Settlement Complex of the Hungarian Plain (Öcsöd-Kováshalom): András Füzesi, Knut Rassmann, Eszter Bánffy and Pál Raczky
  • 11. The Practice of Everyday Life on a European Bronze Age Tell: Reflections from Százhalombatta-Földvár (Hungary): Joanna Sofaer, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Magdolna Vicze
  • 12. Social Life on Bronze Age Tells. Outline of a Practice-oriented Approach: Tobias L. Kienlin
  • 13. Architecture, Power and Everyday Life in the Iron Age of North-eastern Iberia. Research from 1985 to 2019 on the Tell-like Fortress of Els Vilars (Arbeca, Lleida, Spain): Joan B. López, Emili Junyent and Natàlia Alonso
• PART 3. CONCLUDING REMARKS
  • 14. Then, Now, to Come – A Commentary: John Chapman