Before the Agorà. A Model for Understanding Public Space in the ancient Near East.

This paper discusses the civic importance of urban squares in the cities of the Levant and the Near East before the development of the Greek polis. It is generally assumed that, in most ancient cities of Western Asia (“Oriental cities”), urban squares did not play any significant role in urban design. Based on the case-study of the Eastern Mediterranean city of Ugarit in the 13th century BCE, this paper argue for the contrary and set forward a streamlined, integrated and GIS-based procedure to infer urban behaviour in public spaces from an ancient city plan. This methodology may be of use for all those working within historical frameworks where written and visual sources are scarce or absent.