In the town of Kursi, evidence has been found of a Jewish presence going back 1,500 years:
University of Haifa researchers found the marble during an excavation in Kursi, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The discovery is the first piece of evidence confirming the existence of a Jewish or early Christian community in Kursi, mentioned in the New Testament as the place that YHSVH performed the Miracle of the Swine. source: https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2015/12/17/found-slab-with-hebrew-inscriptions-where-bible-says-jesus-performed-miracle-of-the-swine/
Kursi means “seat or chair” in a variety of Semitic languages.
The slab has some phrases that imply that the slab was a memorial stone and phrases like “Remembered for good” and some allusions to either Mary, the mother of the Messiah, or marble also make an appearance. Some sources believe this indicates that a marble floor was dedicated to a synagogue.
The confirmation of a Jewish presence here, however, is interesting from the point of the New Testament because Jewish people would not have naturally kept swine as they were considered an unclean animal:
What is certain is that the location was in gentile territory. Because Jewish dietary laws forbid the eating of pork, no Jew would have been raising pigs. source: https://www.seetheholyland.net/kursi/
The news of this miracle would have spread like fire into Kursi:
It would have been to this city that the swineherds ran to tell of the fate of their pigs. And it would have been the residents of this city who begged Jesus to leave their neighbourhood (Matthew 8:34). Source: ibid.
In this era of “fake news” and reports of troubling activities of demonic spiritual qualities and otherwise, is it possible that this stone was found to substantiate a similar process among the media networks to prepare the way for a kind of news that is more reliable? It is interesting that the healed man is not sent into Kursi–at least not by name:
The healed man begs to go with YHSVH — but YHSVH tells him to go home and tell his friends what has happened.
“And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed” (Mark 5:20). So this gentile man becomes the first person commissioned by YHSVH to spread the Good News to non-Jews. source: (ibid)
The Decapolis is where Kursi is, but was a group of city-states of mostly Hellenistic pagans. Perhaps the healed man was an additional “goad” for demonic presences in these populations.