Recent archaeological discoveries within the Upper Tigris region in Anatolia (Southeastern Turkey) offer a unique opportunity to understand the dynamics of the Assyrian Empire borderlands and interactions with and between its indigenous communities. The material culture yielded by Hirbemerdon Tepe and other nearby settlements is now playing a major role in bringing to light the socio-economic and historical traits of the ancient past of these lands.

Within a few years most of the region will be irreversibly submerged, due to the construction of the Ilisu dam, the biggest hydroelectric power plant project in Turkey. It is of paramount importance to understand and record as much data as possible about the local communities and the foreign connections that flowered in this area. This volume provides a survey of these local cultures, in particular between the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (ca. 13th–10th centuries BCE), and the dramatic changes introduced by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the following centuries (ca. 10th–7th centuries BCE). These aspects are explored via the case study offered by the Hirbemerdon Tepe Iron Age settlement.

A network emerges, formed by different economic and social components such as pastoral nomadism, chiefdoms and city-states, together with the strong Assyrian influence from the south, creating a lively multiracial, correlated and dynamic environment, contributing to the better-known Mesopotamian low-lands and revealed for its importance within the ancient Near Eastern general landscape.