This study of the spatial organization of the Phoenician cities and the link they maintained with their hinterlands between the reign of Darius III (336-330 BC) and the arrival of Pompey in the East (66 BC) is based on an archeological corpus of fifty-three archeological sites identified in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The development of Phoenician studies from the 19th century onward favoured approaches focusing on the link between the Phoenicians and the Mediterranean Sea. Today, an increasing number of studies are reconsidering the link between the ancient societies and their territories in the light of spatial analysis. Such an approach is used here to study the Phoenician cities and their hinterlands. The links between the fifty-three sites of the corpus are modeled by spatial interaction networks and hierarchical networks and compared with the Hellenistic historical context. This context is studied on a regional and local scale and explains the general geopolitics of Phoenicia at this time. It is also a source of data used in the network models. The cross referencing of historical data and network models offers a dynamic view of the Phoenician hinterlands mostly centered on the political functioning and the commercial and religious activities of the cities
The hinterlands of the Phoenician cities in the Hellenistic period (4th – 1st BC) : historical and spatial approaches of a geocultural area