New approach to the study of city planning and domestic dwellings in the ancient Near East

This paper presents the results of a magnetic survey on the Hellenistic and Roman site of Doura‐ Europos in Syria. The interpretation of the magnetic data is based on an original approach by considering the use of space in a domestic unit. This type of study has been developed for sociological research but is adapted to the information carried within geophysical data. After a brief presentation of the role of geophysical methods for the study of city planning, the most important components of the ‘space syntax’ will be presented and applied to two blocks of Doura‐Europos, one that has been excavated in the twentieth century by the Yale University and another surveyed using the magnetic method.