Papers included in the volume were presented at the 2011 international academic conference Continuity and Destruction in Alexander's East: the transformation of monumental space from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity', which took place at the University of Oxford. The conference and publication theme - the region commonly known as the Hellenistic East - follows the long-term research interests of the editors and brings together scholars and specialists doing work in the region. It follows in the footsteps of a previous conference of 2009, From Pella to Gandhara: Hybridisation and Identity in the Art and Architecture of the Hellenistic East, which resulted in an edited volume of 2011 published by Archaeopress. While Pella to Gandhara' looked into the Hellenistic East as a whole, Continuity and Destruction' narrows the focus onto the Near East, with its greater wealth of archaeological research and publication. At the same time, the focus of the current topic carries over onto an extended time frame spanning the aftermath of the Macedonian campaign, thus tracing steady, smooth or abrupt changes of defining spaces in ancient societies as these were moulded and shaped by the events of the day."