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.

由于其漫长的分层沉积序列，泰尔遗址是世界许多地区考古学解释的核心。然而，人们对创造建筑遗迹和相关材料的文化选择知之甚少，之前的层如何定位上面的生活社区也是如此。本文呼吁通过对西非布基纳法索的考古遗址的检查，对线索形成过程有积极的理解。我们认为，这里的故事是通过生活社区和祖先社区之间共存的强烈文化信仰而形成的。根据挖掘数据和道路建设暴露的横截面剖面数据，我们提供了证据，证明建筑遗迹是在与祖先的制作和崇拜相关的仪式中积极创造和保存的。只有当个体的活跃记忆从生活社区中消失后，特定的地方才会被用于新的建筑（通常带有基础仪式沉积物），从而导致缓慢的（至少 80-100 年）分层过程。通过这些核心仪式过程的变化，动态的多时空社会群体在 1500 多年的不平等、平等主义革命和黑死病大流行的时代中重塑了自己。