The territory of Hippos: Its settlement dynamics and development from the Hellenistic to the Late Roman period as seen through spatial analytical methods

In this article we present an attempt to reconstruct the agricultural, economic, and administrative territory of the city of Hippos of the Decapolis from the Hellenistic to the Late Roman periods. The aim was to test models of development of territories proposed for Greek poleis and to apply approaches relating the site catchment and central place theory to the study of territoriality of Hellenistic and Roman cities in the southern Levant. The research methodology encompasses spatial analyses of the settlement patterns, using computation of travel times, average neighbour analysis and kernel density analysis, applied to archaeological heritage data. The archaeological data and geo-spatial analyses are supplemented with historical–geographical sources and new archaeological data and are incorporated into the local and regional context.