In Part I of this book, I argue that imperial networks are not born hundreds or thousands of kilometres from their capital city, but at its very threshold and the landscapes that surround it. Doing away with traditional centre-periphery dichotomies, Chapters 2 and 3 examine Hittite practices of empire-making in what is generally considered to be its political heartland. The analyses presented in this section suggest that rather than the well-integrated nation-like state from which Hittite imperial ventures were launched, the central Anatolian plateau was the first and ongoing target of its imperialism as well as the region most profoundly transformed by its imperialist ventures further afield.