Judaea/Palaestina and Arabia: cities and hinterlands in Roman and Byzantine times

While already for several decades, survey archaeology and the investigationof city – hinterland relations have been in the focus of Mediterranean archaeology, the systematic implementation of this method in the southern Levant, is not commonly practiced. Only a few cities in this region were investigated by systematic intensive or extensive field surveys. This volume is dedicated to urban infrastructure and it aims at exploring the relationships between cities and their urban peripheries and hinterlands. It focusses on some southern Levantine major and secondary administrative centers of Judaea/Palaestina and Arabia under Roman and Byzantine rule (1st to 7th century CE). While investigating the historical geography of the southern Levant has a long tradition, today research questions have changed, and in many cases the study of micro-regions with their hinterlands are the focus of field projects. Such studies can only be undertaken in a systematic way, using multi-disciplinary approaches and high-resolution analyses looking at all kinds of zones of urban settlements and connections within the site and its periphery and hinterland. The contributions of this volume present a first attempt to look at urban settlements in the southern Levant from a comparative perspective.