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Oxbow Books

Oxbow Books is a leading publisher in the fields of archaeology, ancient history and medieval studies, with an international reputation for quality and affordability. Oxbow's archaeology publishing covers all periods from earliest prehistory through classical archaeology, the ancient Near East, Egyptology, the Middle Ages and post-medieval archaeology. They publish a wide variety of books including scholarly monographs, edited collections of papers, and excavation and research reports in related fields such as archaeological practice and theory, archaeozoology, and environmental, landscape and maritime archaeology.

Founded in Oxford in 1983 by academic and museum archaeologist, David Brown, Oxbow Books has evolved and expanded significantly over the years. Now celebrating their 40th anniversary, Oxbow remains dedicated to the quality of their publishing for readers, and the contribution their books bring to the scholarly and professional communities more broadly.

The Hidden Lives of Viking Women Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9798888571866
Pub Date: 17 Jan 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations
Description:
This edited volume brings together an international group of scholars to address the lives, roles, myths, mythology, and lived experiences of Viking women as well as the impacts of change on women during the turbulent period of the Viking Age. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, this is a book dedicated to the lesserknown aspects of women’s lives as active members of society. It provides an innovative way of bringing together work from archaeological, anthropological, historical, and literary perspectives to address questions about women in trade, in war, in magic, in the household and activities that provided women with power and respect in their communities.
RRP: £29.95
Damjili Cave Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888571804
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 160 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
Modern archaeological research carried out since the late 19th century has sufficiently demonstrated that the beginning of the food production economy and the establishment of a farming society had a significant impact on the shaping of subsequent human history. Accordingly, these processes of Neolithization have attracted a great deal of interest from archaeologists and anthropologists worldwide. The South Caucasus, i.
RRP: £55.00
Cultural Landscapes of Northeast Scotland Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9798888571576
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 90 b/w, 60 colour
Description:
The authors explore multifaceted aspects of the competing cultural landscapes that comprise the northeast of Scotland. This interdisciplinary collection uses a deep temporal perspective at a range of scales, from microlandscape studies to largescale geological and archaeological environments. It presents collaborative research carried out by a local conservation group, the Bailies of Bennachie, and the University of Aberdeen across a twelveyear period – the ‘Bennachie Landscapes Project’.
RRP: £45.00
Cahokia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781785708855
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The large American Indian city of Cahokia sits amidst a diverse natural landscape within the larger central Mississippi river valley. Well positioned on the rich agricultural soils of the Mississippi river bottomlands of the Amercan Bottom it is at the core of a cultural landscape that its residents helped shape. In this volume the editors and authors attempt to not just focus on Cahokia and its configuration but also the other towns and settlements dispersed throughout the region extant for nearly four centuries.
RRP: £38.00
Strøby Toftegård Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9798888571491
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Pre-Christian Cult Sites
Illustrations: 312 color plans, drawings, photos, 34 b/w
Description:
Strøby Toftegård: Halls, Hierarchies and Social Dynamics in Late Iron Age and Viking Age Denmark presents and considers the archaeological material from the site of Strøby Toftegård in the eastern part of Zealand, Denmark, where comprehensive excavations took place between 1994 and 2013. The book seeks to qualify the interpretation of Farm 1 as the residence of a magnate from c. AD 650 to c.
RRP: £55.00
All the Emperor's Men Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 496
ISBN: 9781842173008
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: approx 200 illus and plans
Description:
Trajan's Column, set up in the heart of Rome, was completed in 113 CE to commemorate the emperor Trajan's wars across the Danube. Its reliefs provide a uniquely detailed picture of the army at war in perfect harmony with Trajan who in his own lifetime and forever after was accounted 'The Best of Emperors'. The sculptures are a panegyric to military achievement of the troops and to leadership by their emperor, but, much more than this, they have exerted an enormous influence on modern perceptions of Roman art, architecture, warfare, politics, religion, ethnography and geography.
RRP: £45.00
Ancient Effigy Mound Landscapes of Upper Midwestern North America Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781785700873
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
Illustrations: black/white and colour illustrations
Description:
Between c. AD 700 and 1100, Late Woodland people of the Upper Midwest used the topography and other features of the natural landscape to create vast ceremonial landscapes consisting of thousands of earthen mounds sculpted into animals and animal spirits that mirrored their belief and clan-based social structure and that served an important role in mortuary ritual. In so doing, the Late Woodland people created quite visible three-dimensional maps of ancient cosmology and social structures that are similar to the beliefs and social systems of more recent Indian people.
RRP: £38.00
New Voices in Iranian Archaeology Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571453
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 110 B/W illustrations
Description:
This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity.
RRP: £40.00
Southeast Arabia at the Dawn of the Second millennium Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544
ISBN: 9781789257953
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
The end of the 3rd millennium was a time of significant transformation in Southeast Arabia (the United Arab Emirates and Northern Oman). The cultural homogeneity of the preceding Early Bronze Age, Umm an-Nar period (c. 2700–2000 BC) came to an end and gave way to the Middle Bronze Age, Wadi Suq period (2000–1600 BC).
RRP: £65.00
Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9798888571125
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 100 color and B/W illustrations
Description:
For ambitious late antique homeowners seeking to demonstrate their status and taste, water and its display offered almost infinite possibilities. Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West: Cultivating Living Buildings presents the first synthesis of the archaeological evidence for late antique water features in both urban houses and extra-urban villas across the western Empire. Ginny Wheeler examines a wide and varied range of examples: from decorative basins and pools to fountains of all forms to water-equipped dining couches.
RRP: £45.00
Coins, Riches, and Lands Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789259902
Pub Date: 05 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 120 B/W illustrations
Description:
Land was the ideal store of wealth in the ancient Mediterranean world. It brought social respectability, and its possession allowed participation in the politics of the cities governed by landowning elites. Crucial defense of the interests of a given polity through armed services often involved the distribution of lands to laborers still not integrated in these societies.
RRP: £50.00
Excavations at Tlachtga, Hill of Ward, Co. Meath, Ireland Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888570449
Pub Date: 29 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: Colour & B/W images
Description:
Initial remote sensing survey at Tlachtga, Co. Meath in 2011–12 highlighted the presence of multiple, partially overlapping phases of enclosure at the site. Three subsequent seasons of excavation provided critical interpretive evidence, with over 15,000 fragments of animal bone, human remains, charred plant material, evidence of metalworking, and a hoard of Anglo-Saxon silver coins dating to the late 10th century AD.
RRP: £35.00
Chariots, Swords and Spears Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781789255423
Pub Date: 23 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This volume brings together recent excavations at two sites in Pocklington, East Yorkshire. The main focus of the volume is examination of Iron Age burials, which included chariots, swords, and spears, along with inclusion of earlier Prehistoric and later Roman activity. The excavations have enabled further scientific evidence for migration and mobility in the Iron Age population and secure chronologies for artefacts.
RRP: £50.00
Forsaken Relics Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9798888571149
Pub Date: 17 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)
Illustrations: 100 B/W illustrations
Description:
Forsaken Relics examines the intricate mechanisms of ritualistic appropriation of ruined and/or abandoned assets and artifacts. It explores how this process occurs in situations where there is legislation to regulate the appropriation of ownerless property, as well as in cases where such rules are either absent or contested, leading to disputes and conflicts.Every society has developed its unique ways of managing the re-appropriation of ‘ownerless things’, such as places and houses abandoned after conflicts, crises, or natural disasters, forsaken cemeteries, tombs, and forgotten goods.
RRP: £50.00
British Pottery: The First 3000 Years Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9798888570715
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 70 B/W illustrations
Description:
Pottery was at the heart of the ‘Neolithic package’ appearing in Britain with the first farmers around 4000 BC. It arrived as a mature technology and was essential to the new, largely sedentary, lifestyle and economy. It transformed storage and cooking practices, and the earliest ceramics seem to have been essential equipment in the new practice of dairying.
RRP: £39.95
Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9798888571774
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 86 B/W photos and line drawings
Description:
Archaeoacoustics, the study of sound in the past, is increasingly attracting attention. Although some work, particularly in musical archaeology, had been conducted previously, the field received a significant boost when the term itself was coined by Scarre and Lawson in their 2006 volume of that name, which brought together two major distinct strands: archaeomusicology and the acoustics of archaeological spaces. Since 2006, the number of publications has steadily been growing, yet the field remains in its infancy.
RRP: £38.00
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