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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.
Lands of the Shamans Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781785709548
Pub Date: 16 Aug 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
‘Shamanism’ is a term with specific anthropological roots, but which is used more generally to cover a set of interactions between a practitioner or ‘shaman’ and a spiritual or religious realm beyond the reach of most members of the community. It has often been considered from an anthropological viewpoint, but this book gathers the most recent studies on a subject which has not been comprehensively studied by archaeologists. By putting together experts from two continents who have studied the phenomenon of shamanism, Lands of the Shamans through carefully selected case studies uses the archaeological evidence to construct the shamans’ worldview, landscape and cosmology.
RRP: £38.00
Cille Pheadair Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 656
ISBN: 9781785708510
Pub Date: 26 Jul 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
Cille Pheadair is one of more than 20 Viking Age and Late Norse settlements discovered on the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides (Western Isles), off the west coast of Scotland. Its unusually well-preserved stratigraphic sequence of nine phases of occupation, including five longhouses and many smaller buildings, provides a remarkable insight into daily life on a Norse farmstead during two centuries of near-continuous occupation c. AD 1000 –1200.
Crossing the Threshold Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781789250763
Pub Date: 12 Jul 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Every day millions of people enter public buildings of many forms and functions: Notre-Dame in Paris, Central Station in New York; the British Museum in London, that are decorated with recessed doorways. None of them is likely to be aware that this style of decoration has been continuously employed for 6500 years in temples, royal palaces, tombs, churches, synagogues and modern public buildings, becoming a symbol of the divine and of a place of worship. During this very long period, from the ancient Near East until today, the world has undergone immense changes, but the concept of the recessed opening was never forgotten or abandoned.
From Roman Civitas to Anglo-Saxon Shire Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 264
ISBN: 9781785709845
Pub Date: 12 Jul 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This book is the culmination of the author’s lifelong interest in the Roman to medieval transition in England and in the analysis of the historic landscape of Wessex. It begins with a focused, referenced, and critical exploration of the thorny, but crucial, issues of post-Roman personal and group identity, employing linguistic, historical, archaeological and toponymical evidence. A series of integrated studies seek to elucidate changes in the territorial organisation of the Wessex landscape, from Somerset to Hampshire, from the Roman period to the emergence of the historic counties.
Neolithic Bodies Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 154
ISBN: 9781785709012
Pub Date: 12 Jul 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
As a result of recent methodological and theoretical developments in approaches to the human body in archaeological contexts, the theme has recently become a particularly dynamic research area. This volume, building on the Neolithic Studies Group conference 2014, captures the variety of debates developing across research into the Neolithic bodies of the Near East and Europe. Papers are divided into three themes; living bodies, the body in death and the representation of the body.
Trends in Biological Anthropology 2 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 112
ISBN: 9781785706202
Pub Date: 02 Jul 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Trends in Biological Anthropology
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
The articles included in this volume were all presented at the 15th annual British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) conference held at the University of York on the 13th and 15th of September 2013. Ten papers are presented, on a range of topics and themes, including that of ‘Constructing Identities: Ethnicity and Migration’ exploring theoretical approaches to the multiple identities of the body and multidisciplinary approaches to investigating the African origin of African American communities in parts of South America. Papers exploring the theme ‘Treatment of the Body: Understanding and Portrayals’ focus on the visibility of prehistoric burial practice in Britain and the Levant (the ‘invisible dead’), and evidence for diversity in late medieval Christian burial practice in Taunton, Somerset.
RRP: £49.99
The Archaeology of Western Sahara Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781782971726
Pub Date: 29 Jun 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus with 32pp colour plates
Description:
Contrary to much perceived wisdom, the Sahara is a rich and varied tapestry of diverse environments that sustain an array of ecosystems. Throughout its history, the Sahara has been a stage for human evolution, with human habitation, movement and lifeways shaped by a dynamic environment of successive phases of relative humidity and aridity driven by wider global climatic changes. The nature of human utilization of the landscape has undergone many changes, from the ephemeral and ill-defined lithic scatters of the Early Holocene to the dense and complex funerary landscapes of Late Holocene Pastoral period.
RRP: £55.00
The Times of their Lives Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781785706684
Pub Date: 29 Jun 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo of change.
RRP: £40.00
House of the Surgeon, Pompeii Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 664
ISBN: 9781785707285
Pub Date: 29 Jun 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The House of the Surgeon represents the first major publication of an important series of excavations undertaken by the Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (1994-2006) at the ancient city of Pompeii in a city block known as Insula VI 1. This is one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most important sub-surface, pre-79 AD excavations ever to have been undertaken at Pompeii. The methodology employed to the systematic examination of an entire city block, involving extensive artefact and ecofact recovery, using the latest scientific methods, has generated one of the single largest bodies of archaeological data ever produced on the development of ancient Pompeii, from the earliest traces of human habitation until its destruction.
RRP: £70.00
Buildings of Medieval Europe Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 164
ISBN: 9781785709715
Pub Date: 29 Jun 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 72 b/w
Description:
This volume brings together an interesting range of papers discussing medieval buildings across Europe. They provide interesting insights to life in the medieval world in several understudied areas of Europe. The papers range from Croatia and Transylvania in the east, Scandinavia in the north and Britain in the west, providing insights into areas that are rarely discussed by books published in western Europe.
Insularity and Identity in the Roman Mediterranean Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781785705809
Pub Date: 28 May 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Insularity – the state or condition of being an island – has played a key role in shaping the identities of populations inhabiting islands of the Mediterranean. As entities surrounded by water and usually possessing different landscapes and ecosystems from those of the mainland, islands allow for the potential to study both the land and the sea. Archaeologically, they have the potential to reveal distinct identities shaped by such forces as invasion, imperialism, colonialism, and connectivity.
RRP: £38.00
Market as Place and Space of Economic Exchange Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781785708930
Pub Date: 18 Apr 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
In the context of commodification, material culture has particular properties hitherto considered irrelevant or neglected. First, the market is a spatial structure, assigning special properties to the things offered: the goods and commodities. Secondly, the market defines a principle of dealing with things, including them in some contexts, excluding them from others.
Myth and Materiality Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781785709753
Pub Date: 18 Apr 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Insights in Archaeology
Illustrations: 35 b/w
Description:
The aim of this book is to promote the thesis that myth may illuminate archaeology and that on occasion archaeology may shed light on myth. Medieval Irish literature is rich in mythic themes and some of these are used as a starting point. Some myths are of great antiquity and some were invented by contemporary authors.
Palmyra after Zenobia AD 273-750 Cover Palmyra after Zenobia AD 273-750 Cover
Format: 
Hardback Paperback
Pages: 168
ISBN: 9781785709425
Pub Date: 18 Apr 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 72 illustrations
Pages: 168
ISBN: 9798888570609
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 72 Illustrations including Color & B/W photographs, maps, illustrations, charts, and diagrams
Description:
This book casts light on a much neglected phase of the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, namely the period between the fall of the Palmyrene ‘Empire’ (AD 272) and the end of the Umayyad dominion (AD 750). The goal of the book is to fill a substantial hole in modern scholarship - the late antique and early Islamic history of the city still has to be written. In late antiquity Palmyra remained a thriving provincial city whose existence was assured by its newly acquired role of stronghold along the eastern frontier.
Transforming the Landscape Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781785706288
Pub Date: 18 Apr 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This beautifully illustrated volume examines American Indian rock art across an expansive region of eastern North America during the Mississippian Period (post AD 900). Unlike portable cultural material, rock art provides in situ evidence of ritual activity that links ideology and place. The focus is on the widespread use of cosmograms depicted in Mississippian rock art imagery.
Journal of Roman Pottery Studies Volume 17 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 138
ISBN: 9781785709340
Pub Date: 12 Apr 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Journal of Roman Pottery Studies
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This volume publishes papers relating to new research on Roman period ceramics. Two papers present evidence of Late Iron Age and early Roman pottery forms and fabrics from west and east Kent: from West Malling, including transitional wares, and by Sholden villa, with groups of second century date including samian. Ceramic fire-dogs discovered in the area of the Dutch Lowlands and Flanders brings to attention a type of find that may prove to be more common than previously noted.
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