This dissertation investigates the impact of incorporation into the Neo-Assyrian empire (ca. 900-609 BC) on the domestic economies and social organization of provincial subjects on its northwestern periphery. Three seasons of excavation at Zincirli Höyük, Turkey (ancient Sam'al), carried out by the author under the auspices of the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, revealed residential and cultic buildings that were occupied in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, over the city's transition from the capital of a semi-autonomous Assyrian client kingdom to a provincial capital ruled by an Assyrian governor.

In its interpretation of the localized data obtained by the methods of household archaeology, the dissertation attempts to wed the local perspective appropriate to a methodologically individualist analysis of historical change to more global understandings of the motives and methods of early empires. The dissertation departs from currently influential understandings of the relationship between the Assyrian core and its conquered territories that are highly economistic and founded on analogies with modern European empires, preferring instead to describe the Neo-Assyrian empire in terms of the patrimonial model developed by Eisenstadt.

The inquiries described here into the economic activities, indications of local prosperity and prestige, and social units and networks of this neighborhood demonstrate a high degree of overall continuity in the life of Sam'al under direct Assyrian rule. The model of a patrimonial empire, whose main concern was the maintenance of the security and control of its conquered territories rather than their restructuring for the maximum economic exploitation, is therefore found to best account for the development of Sam'al as an Assyrian provincial capital. Minor shifts in economic and social organization are attributed to a complex interaction of imperial policies, the conditions and opportunities created by unified rule, regional geopolitical events, and the pursuit of local political, economic, and social agendas against this background. This dissertation's close examination of households in imperial transition illuminates the interplay of local and imperial dynamics in the development of provincial areas under a transregional empire such as Assyria.