I see Peter's evidence but in the case of the picture you linked to I tend to agree with you, it doesn't look like dominance. I can see how it could be a good idea to smash the stones of a reviled old order and use them as rubble for your own building, but to treat them with such care and make them an architectural feature like that doesn't ring true to me as an act of humiliation. There would always be the danger that the symbolism of dominance would be lost on the local yokels within one generation and they'd see it as reverence.
'Course, some dates for some of these buttresses and insertions would clarify things.
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