tels

Tels is a term that may refer to more than one concept, depending on the context. The most established use is in archaeology, where the word tell (plural tels or tells) denotes a mound formed by many generations of settlement. These mounds accumulate through the deliberate destruction and rebuilding of structures, creating stratified layers that help archaeologists trace long-term patterns of culture and habitation. In modern English, tells is the more common plural form, though some transliterations and older scholarly works use tels.

In linguistic and toponymic contexts, tel or tall is a Semitic word meaning a hill or mound, and it appears in place names across the Middle East and parts of the Mediterranean. When rendered in English, these names may appear as Tell, Tel, or Tall, with varying plural forms depending on the transliteration system used. Consequently, tels may occasionally appear in multilingual corpora or scholarly titles as a plural form related to such toponyms, though this usage is less common than the standard tells.

Usage notes are important for tels because the term has specialized meaning. In most contemporary English-language archaeology writing, tells is preferred for the plural of the mound, while tels may be encountered in older texts or in discussions of transliteration choices. Outside archaeology and transliteration discussions, tels has limited recognized usage, and readers should rely on surrounding context to determine whether the reference is to a mound in the Near East, to a transliteration variant, or to an acronym or proper name presented in uppercase.