Understanding Archaeological Tells

Circulating Memories and Engaging with Ancestors through Material Attachments

Bibliographic Data

ID6043941
AuthorsA Dueppen (0000-0002-6617-1393, University of Oregon, corresponding author), Daphne Gallagher (University of Oregon)
Year2023
Volume33
Issue4
Pages575-600
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCambridge Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0959-7743 • E-ISSN: 1474-0540
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0959774323000021
OpenAlexW4323668130
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited45

Tell sites are central to archaeological interpretation in many world regions due to their lengthy sequences of stratified deposits. However, the cultural choices that create architectural remnants and associated materials are more poorly understood, as are the ways that previous layers situate the living community above. This article calls for agentive understandings of tell-formation processes through examination of archaeological sites in Burkina Faso, West Africa. We argue that tells here formed through strong cultural beliefs of co-residence between the living and ancestral communities. Drawing on data from excavation and cross-section profiles exposed by road construction, we provide evidence that architectural remnants were actively created and preserved in rituals related to the making and veneration of ancestors. Particular places in tells were used for new construction (often with foundation ritual deposits) only after the active memory of the individual faded from the living community, resulting in a slow (at least 80–100 years) stratification process. Through variations on these core ritual processes, dynamic multi-temporal social groups reinvented themselves over 1500 years through eras of inequity, egalitarian revolution and the Black Death pandemic

Archaeological evidence · Archaeology · Excavation · Residence · Social science · Social stratification · Sociology · Veneration · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

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