It has recently been suggested that the Early Dynastic buildings at Tello were so inadequately recorded that they should be excluded from any study of the architecture of the period (Tunca 1984: p. xxi). A re-examination of the published material suggests that this is an unnecessarily defeatist conclusion. A number of possibilities deserve serious consideration, at least insofar as they concern the buildings on Tell K known as the Construction Inférieure and the Maison des Fruits. The evidence presented here is drawn from the summary of the excavations published by Parrot in 1948, and from the earlier work by de Sarzec and Heuzey. The sections and plans are taken from Parrot's plans 13 and 15 and his identifying numbers and letters have been retained for ease of reference (Fig. 1).

The first construction which concerns us here (Fig. 1 (ii)–(iv)), is a pavement of Mosul marble lying 8·48 m above plain level and marked ‘a’ on Parrot's plan 13. This is the first in a series of building operations (de Sarzec 1884–1912: p. 412) of which the second seems to have been the erection of a single room on the platform, marked on the plan as room 1. The section in the centre of plan 13 marked “Deuxième état” (Fig. 1 (iii) ) indicates clearly that room 2, which Parrot thought was contemporary with room 1, was in fact a later addition as its exterior wall rests on the later brick packing ‘f’ and not on pavement ‘a’. It should be noted that the section marked “Premier état” on plan 13 does not appear in the earlier excavation reports and seems to be Parrot's secondary interpretation of the evidence, rather than that of the excavators. It should also be noted that the direction of the North arrow appears to have been reversed on Parrot's plan when compared with the earlier ones. The direction shown on de Sarzec's plans will be used here.