‘EIDOS of a city: simulating the collapse and resilience of ancient Eastern Mediterranean urban environments via agent-based modelling’ is a Marie Skłodowska–Curie (MSCA) post-doctoral project. The Eastern Mediterranean, a politically dynamic and environmentally sensitive region hosts some of the world’s oldest civilizations and longest records of urban evolution. Despite the importance of cities in the long-term development of human societies, the mechanisms that lead to urban decline, socio-economic collapse, and urban resilience within this region remain understudied. Current studies largely focus on individual factors that lead cities into decline, such as environmental changes within the region. Such an approach, however, does not capture the complexity of past urban systems or explain why some cities managed to endure during periods of extreme environmental change while others did not. EIDOS aims to contribute to the current discourse on understanding past urban transformations within the Eastern Mediterranean by identifying some of the mechanisms that contributed to urban decline or resilience.