Articles by Elodie Guillon

This article focuses on a multidisciplinary and experimental approach on the relationships between the Phoenician cities (Lebanon, Syria, Israel) and their hinterlands in the Hellenistic period (4th-1st century BC). The article presents the successive stages of this approach. The first one is the construction of the corpus and the recording of the historical and essentially archaeological data in a relational database. The next step is addressed to spatial modelling. In other words, it means applying a spatial analysis to the data. For this purpose, we select a model, the gravity model, which relates the distance between archaeological sites, their comparative importance, and their capacity to interact between each other. Then we set up the model, thanks to our historical and geographical knowledge of the region. The results are visualisations, i.e., potential maps that include modelled networks extending across the region. They must be commented on in the light of the historical and archaeological knowledge that we have about the area: they confirm or question our reading of the Phoenician territories and get into dialogue with the archaeological and historical data, to improve our understanding of the cities. Then, we carry out a second experimentation, with the addition of six archaeological sites in the corpus, identified by archaeological survey and dated to the Hellenistic period. A new spatial modelling is carried out, with the same model and the same parameters. The partial reconfiguration of the networks is again commented on. The conclusion, finally, deals with the contribution of the approach, as a new tool available to archaeologists and historians in the study of Phoenician territories.