Final answer:
Marginal peoples traded and interacted culturally with Assyria and Persia, being buffers or proxies, with interactions ranging from economic exchanges to conflicts.
Step-by-step explanation:
People on the margins of Assyria and Persia interacted through economic trade, cultural adaptations, and occasionally through conflicts and skirmishes. Marginal communities often served as buffers protecting the empires from invasions, but they also facilitated cultural and economic exchanges. This dynamics experienced variations depending on time, geography, and the nature of relationships with the core power.
For instance, the Arab tribes became proxies in conflicted relations between powerful empires of their times, exemplified by the Ghassanids and Lakhmids acting on behalf of the Byzantines and Sasanian Persia respectively. Governments negotiated, and their interactions occasionally swung from open warfare to diplomatic engagements, such as exchanges of gifts and participation in each other's court ceremonies. The steppes tribes brought a different dynamic, often involving direct conflict due to their superior mounted warfare tactics.