Archaeology & Ancient History
In September 2022 Oxbow's bookshop and distribution buisness merged with Pen & Sword Books, a family run independent publisher of history books. The book distribution aspect of our business will continue to bring you some of the best books in the field of archaeology and related disciplines as Casemate UK. The Oxbow Books publishing imprint remains as a separate entity, still sold and distributed exclusively by us.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781593332747
Pub Date: 14 Sep 2005
Description:
Sam Osmanagich transports the reader to ruined Mayan cities including the brilliant Chichen Itza, elegant Uxmal, artistic Copan, magical Palenque, forgotten Ek Balam, beautiful Izamal, hidden Yaxchilan, spiritual Oxkintok, monumental Coba, and colossal Tikal.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9781842171868
Pub Date: 18 Aug 2005
Illustrations: b/w illus, 2 maps
Description:
The ordinary people who made up the largest section of the population in the cities and towns in the Roman world were largely ignored by contemporary writers and have often been marginalised in traditional studies of Roman urbanism, but research into their patterns of work and social interaction have increased markedly in recent years. This book has come out of a conference on 'Roman Working Lives and Urban Living' held at the University of Durham in 2001. The conference was planned as a forum for people researching urban space and architecture, commercial and retail structures, organisation of craft activity and social theory.
The twelve papers presented here have been organised into two categories: Urban living and the settings for working lives and People at work: Owners, and artisans, crafts and professions . The range of topics and variety of approaches in the papers emphasise the wealth of the material available, and it is hoped that this will stimulate further research into the lives of the 'silent voices' of Roman urban society.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9781898249160
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2005
Series: British Institute at Ankara Monograph
Illustrations: 202p of illus, 11p plates
Description:
The excavations at Canhasan Höyök I in the Konya plain of central Turkey revealed a series of settlements running through the Chalcolithic period (c.5500-3000 BC). The pottery from the site, much of it of types previously unknown or not found elsewhere in stratified contexts, is of fundamental importance for an understanding of this period in Anatolia.
In this volume, Dr French, the excavator of Canhasan and for many years director of the British Institute at Ankara, carefully and concisely presents both the plain and decorated wares, with detailed descriptions of their characteristic fabrics, shapes and decoration. There is a full catalogue of the best-preserved and most important pieces (which were registered finds), but a major feature of the volume are the drawings of over 2500 less well-preserved pieces, which illustrate all the characteristic shapes and types of decoration. A special feature of the study is a careful grading of the material in terms of chronological reliability. The author privileges the whole, or nearly whole, pots found on floors in each layer, as the only types which were certainly made at the time. Related pottery may be accepted as contemporary, but with less certainty, while unrelated wares must be treated with circumspection, for they may be either recycled from an earlier layer or intrusive from a later one. This rigorous methodology means that the Chalcolithic pottery provides a completely reliable relative chronology through the Chalcolithic period, and the volume will remain a basic reference for Near Eastern archaeology.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781842172001
Pub Date: 05 Aug 2005
Illustrations: 86 b/w illus and pls
Description:
The term 'Mesolithic' was born in the nineteenth century from the need to label a 'hiatus' period and was not generally accepted as a useful term by many scholars until around fifty years later. It has been championed by some, but still concerns others because of the difficulty of defining what it represents. This volume highlights the enthusiasm for Mesolithic studies in the 21st century and the feeling that there is a need to explore the many facets of Mesolithic lifeways.
Approaches are now moving away from the traditional Mesolithic canon that seems to have been based on a particular set of biological and/or ecological perspectives and are now looking for new directions and new theoretical arenas which can only help stimulate Mesolithic debate. The papers in this volume take a range of approaches to a period that has largely been devoid of explicit theoretical discussion. They deconstruct and explore a broad variety of subjects, including mobility, complexity, seasonality, death & burial, gender & sexuality, social relations, music, human agency, ethnoarchaeology and emotion.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781898249153
Pub Date: 28 Jul 2005
Series: British Institute at Ankara Monograph
Description:
The Fifth Anatolian Iron Ages Colloquium, held at Van in 2001, brought together specialists from Turkey, Europe and America to focus on the archaeology of Anatolia in the complex period between the collapse of the Hittite empire and the Persian conquest. The papers gathered in this volume cover the area from Urartu in the east to Phrygia in the west, and range from the discussion of broad problems of chronology and cultural interaction to the presentation of new material from both major and less well known sites. Although most of the papers relate to the area of present-day Turkey, a significant feature of the Fifth Colloquium was the inclusion of papers placing Anatolian archhaeology in its wider context from Thrace, through the Black Sea area, to the Caucasus and beyond.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 285
ISBN: 9781901992458
Pub Date: 20 Jul 2005
Series: MoLAS Monograph
Illustrations: 214 b/w and col illus
Description:
This is an archaeological, architectural and historical study of one of the largest complexes of buildings in the medieval City of London, but one which is largely unknown and of which only two fragments survive above ground today. It is the fifth volume in a series on the monasteries of London. Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, was the first religious house to be established inside the walls of London after the Norman Conquest, in 11078; one of the earliest Augustinian houses to be established in England; and the first to be dissolved, in 1532.
By 1200 the precinct north of Leadenhall Street and just inside Aldgate was filled with imposing stone buildings, including a large and architecturally impressive church which was the burial place of two of the children of King Stephen in the middle of the 12th century. Londons first mayor, Henry FitzAilwin, was buried in the entrance to the chapter house. In the 16th century the monastery was owned by the Duke of Norfolk, second only to Queen Elizabeth in power, who was executed in 1572 for his part in plots surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Several modern excavations of 1977 to 1990, many antiquarian drawings, and a ground-floor and a first-floor plan of all the monastery buildings made around 1585 are brought together here for the first time, to reconstruct a fully illustrated and detailed history and archaeology of the priory site. Not only can all the major periods of the priorys building history be suggested and compared with other religious houses in medieval London, but the excavations produced their own surprises, such as evidence of the beginning of the tin-glazed or delftware pottery industry in the 1590s, and a unique Jewish plate of the 18th century.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 446
ISBN: 9781902937229
Pub Date: 05 Jun 2005
Series: McDonald Institute Monographs
Description:
Volume 4 deals with various aspects of the habitation of Çatalhöyuek. Part A embarks on a discussion of the relationship between the site and its environment, using a wide range of evidence from faunal and charred archaeobotanical remains. Part B looks at evidence from human remains which inform us about diet and lifestyle, as well as wider issues of population dynamics and social structure, including a consideration of population size.
Part C looks at the sediments at Çatalhöyuek, exploring ways in which houses and open spaces in the settlement were lived in. In all of these ways, a picture is built up of the way in which people moved through and lived in the natural and cultural environment of the places we subsume under the name of 'Çatalhöyuek'.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781842171486
Pub Date: 10 May 2005
Description:
In 1998 Anna Marguerite McCann received the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America for her distinguished archaeological achievements. This volume includes the papers presented at a special colloquium held in her honour, along with essays by other colleagues and friends. The volume is divided into two thematic parts: the first reflects Anna McCann's general interests in ancient art and archaeology, especially Greek and Roman sculpture; the other, her specific expertise in underwater and port archaeology and technology.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 56
ISBN: 9781901992540
Pub Date: 05 May 2005
Illustrations: 41 b/w illus
Description:
Excavation ahead of redevelopment by London Underground Limited uncovered flint tools and debitage characteristic of the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and Early Bronze Age. Activity resumed in the Late Bronze Age. A neonate skeleton of Early Iron Age date was recovered from a rubbish pit near a probable roundhouse.
Two crouched adult inhumations are atypically early Roman. Two horse burials and a dog skeleton are also of Roman date. Thereafter, occupation ceased until post-medieval times. Overall, the work provides invaluable information relating to the development of the landscape beneath the suburbs of modern east London.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781842171691
Pub Date: 30 Apr 2005
Description:
This volume examines South Uist, a small island in the soutern half of the Outer Hebrides. In the middle of the island lies the township of Bornais. This covers a particularly flat area of land which means that the three mounds can be seen all the more clearly.
These mounds have been identified as being from the Viking period, with evidence of pre-Viking habitation at the site coming from Iron Age sherds. The excavation of the Bornais settlement is a long-term project, which has been going since 1994. This first volume of results of the excavation focuses on Mound 3, but includes a discussion of the topographic and geophysical survey of all the mounds. There is also considerable analysis of the environmental remains and radiocarbon dating.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781842171653
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2005
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
The recent renaissance of interest in the history of dress and its cultural importance is celebrated in this collection of interdisciplinary essays. The sixteen contributors present on-going research into the study of the clothed body in ancient Egypt and the Aegean, Classical Greece, Rome and Late Antiquity. Through literary and artistic evidence and film, they discuss how dress articulates and defines an individual within his or her given society, at the same time highlighting common themes in scholarship, methodological differences between disciplines and periods, as well as contrasting definitions of what constitutes the clothed body.
Essays discussing Aegean Bronze Age fashions, costume design in filmed biblical epics, clothing in Aristophanic comedy, Greek and Roman female undergarments, the symbolism of the Roman toga, and the spectacle of images of Byzantine dress, are just some of the diverse subjects covered in this study.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9788779341180
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2005
Description:
As Peacock and Williams have noted, amphorae provide us "not with an index of the transportation of goods, but with direct witness of the movement of certain foodstuffs which were of considerable economic importance ..
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
ISBN: 9781842171431
Pub Date: 11 Mar 2005
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
As its title might suggest, this volume sets out to present a new view of Scotland's Neolithic as seen via its monumental structures. The papers brought together here came out of a research day at Cardiff University's School of History and Archaeology in January 2002 and cover a diverse number of topics. They raise questions of ancestry and worldview, and highlight the amount that can be done in examining the settings of monuments.
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781842171189
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2005
Series: Proceedings of the 9th ICAZ Conference
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781785704604
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2016
Series: Proceedings of the 9th ICAZ Conference
Description:
Taphonomic studies are a major methodological advance, the effects of which have been felt throughout archaeology. Zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists were the first to realise how vital it was to study the entire process of how food enters the archaeological record, and taphonomy brought to a close the era when the study of animal bones and plant remains from archaeological sites were regarded mainly as environmental indicators.This volume is indicative of recent developments in taphonomic studies: hugely diverse research areas are being explored, many of which would have been totally unforeseeable only a quarter of a century ago.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781902937304
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2005
Series: McDonald Institute Monographs
Illustrations: 62 ills., 3 tables
Description:
What is the relationship between mind and ideas on the one hand, and the material things of the world on the other? In recent years, researchers have rejected the old debate about the primacy of the mind or material, and have sought to establish more nuanced understandings of the ways humans interact with their material worlds. In this volume alternative approaches are presented, deriving from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives.
Contributors debate the significance of key thresholds in the human past, including sedentism, domestication, and the emergence of social inequality and their impact on changing patterns of human cognition, symbolic expression, and technological innovation. In its global coverage and its broad theoretical scope, this landmark volume offers an innovative and comprehensive assessment of current thinking and future directions.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 316
ISBN: 9780972435345
Pub Date: 20 Jan 2005
Series: American Furniture Annual
Illustrations: 308 illus. (230 colour). 10 fig. Table. End-paper
Description:
Acknowledged as the journal of record in its field, American Furniture presents new research on furniture design, use, production, and appreciation. Begun in 1993, this award-winning annual provides a comprehensive forum on furniture history, technology, connoisseurship, and conservation by the foremost scholars in the field. It is the only interdisciplinary journal devoted exclusively to furniture made or used in the Americas from the 17th century to the present.