  The outer regions of galaxies are expected to contain important clues about
the way in which galaxies are assembled. Although quantitative study of these
parts has been severely limited in the past, breakthroughs are now being made
thanks to the combination of wide-area star counts, deep HST imagery and 8-m
class spectroscopy. I review here several recent results concerning
substructure, star clusters and stellar halos in the outer regions of our
nearest large neighbours, M31 and M33.
