Oded Borowski is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Archaeology and Hebrew at Emory University. He is the director of the Lahav Research Project, Phase IV, in southern Israel. Here is a short excerpt from an article he wrote on how to tell what a tel (or in his spelling tell) looks like.
How is a “tell” formed?
A “tell” consists of a succession of cities built on top of one another. Usually the first occupation of the site was on a low hill overlooking the surrounding area. Each successive city was built on the ruins of the previous one. Each city came to an end, however, destroyed by an invading army or, sometimes, abandoned because of changing climatic or political conditions. Each city left a layer of deposit on top of which the next city was built. Archaeologists use the term stratum for each of these layers (strata, is the plural). The result of this build-up resembles a multi-layered chocolate cake, each layer representing a destroyed or abandoned city.
The section drawing illustrates the various layers (strata) excavated by archaeologists digging at the site of Tel Arad in southern Israel.
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