This is an overview of the lecture "Edge of Empire: Archaeology on the Assyrian Frontier," presented by Dr Andrew Jamieson on Thursday 20th September 2012 at the Melbourne Museum. Tell Ahmar (ancient Til Barsip) was a Neo-Hittite city located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, approximately 20 kilometres south of the Hittite capital, Carchemish. The city was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in 856 BCE and renamed Kar-Shalmaneser, functioning as an outpost on the western fringes of the Assyrian Empire. From 1929-1931, French excavations at the site uncovered a palace at the city centre and an entrance gate to the city, complete with a pair of colossal basalt lions. From 1988-1997, the University of Melbourne led excavations that uncovered the mud brick walls of elite houses (preserved up to 2 metres high in some places) as well as subterranean tombs. The hallmarks of Assyrian culture at the time included large palaces built in city centres and with inner walls displaying stone reliefs of the king (see Assyrian Architecture Statements of Power); wooden furniture inlaid with ivories carved in both the Phoenician and North Syrian styles; repeated use of certain town planning patterns; and vaulted tombs for royalty. The lion gate at Hattusas Photo courtesy of Verity Cridland It would be expected that a conquered city under the control of a political centre would be dominated by the conquering culture, and much of the evidence at Tell Ahmar points to this. At the city centre is a palace containing frescos of Shalmaneser; floorplans of the elite houses conform to known Assyrian patterns; the tombs were of baked brick with vaulted roofs, reminiscent of the Assyrian royal tombs; ivory inlays at the site were similar in style to those found at the Assyrian capital of Nimrud; and a large Assyrian statue was uncovered, believed to be of the Assyrian governor. All of this certainly suggests cultural domination by the Assyrians at Tell Ahmar. However, there also exists some evidence that the local Hittite culture maintained a certain level of influence. While the palace did contain stone reliefs of the king, these were not in the usual narrative style of the Assyrians, where the reliefs would read almost like a comic strip to indicate a series of events. The lion sculptures at the city gate were remarkably similar to those at the old Hittite capital Hattusas, with distinctive rounded ears, gaping jaws and drooping tongues. While there was a definite intrusion of Assyrian culture at Tell Ahmar, the local culture was not entirely subsumed. There was an interaction between the cultures, rather than merely an imposition of one culture over another. The extrapolation we can make from this is that political centres not only imparted their own cultural ideas to their colonies, but in turn absorbed the ideas of those people whom they had conquered.