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.

Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 228

ISBN: 9781842179918

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 108 b/w & col illus

Description:

Recent archaeological work has shown that South Italy was densely occupied at least from the Late Bronze Age, with a marked process of the development of proto-urban centres, accompanied by important technological transformations. The archaeological exploration of indigenous South Italy is a relatively recent phenomenon, thanks to the bias towards the study of Greek colonies. Therefore an assessment of processes taking place in Italic Iron Age communities is well overdue.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 992

ISBN: 9781842174258

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: over 600 illus and 103 tables

Description:

Gathering Time presents the results of a major dating programme that re-writes the early Neolithic of Britain by more accurately dating enclosures, a phenomenon that first appeared in the early Neolithic: places of construction, labour, assembly, ritual and deposition. The project has combined hundreds of new radiocarbon dates with hundreds of existing dates, using a Bayesian statistical framework. Such formal chronological modelling is essential if significantly more precise and robust date estimates are to be achieved than those currently available from informal inspection of calibrated radiocarbon dates. The resulting dating project included over 35 enclosures - the largest study so far attempted in a Bayesian framework. This establishes a new chronology for causewayed and related enclosures in southern Britain, which appeared in the final decades of the 38th century cal BC, increased in number dramatically in the 37th century cal BC, and began no longer to be built by the end of the 36th century cal BC. Several enclosures were of short duration - in some cases probably in use for less than a generation - though some examples do conform to the conventional assumption of a long primary use-life. In Ireland, enclosures of this kind are much scarcer. The project helped to date two of these: Donegore, Co. Antrim and Magheraboy, Co. Sligo. As well as establishing a new chronology for enclosures, Gathering Time also places these results into their wider context, by considering the chronology of the early Neolithic as a whole. Well over a thousand other radiocarbon dates have been critically assessed and modelled in a Bayesian framework - for settlement, monument building and other activity, region by region across southern Britain and across Ireland as a whole (a brief comparative study of Scotland as far north as the Great Glen is also included). Generally in southern Britain other Neolithic activity can be dated before the beginnings of monument building and, among the monuments, long barrows, long cairns, and related forms clearly preceded the earliest causewayed enclosures. The first Neolithic things and practices probably appeared in south-east England in the 41st century cal BC, arguably by some kind of small-scale colonisation from the adjacent continent, and spread at a variable pace across the rest of Britain and Ireland over the next two and a half centuries or more, a process involving acculturation of local people as well as immigrants. Enclosures may have been adapted as a social strategy of harnessing the power of the distant and the exotic, and perhaps old ancestral ties to the European continent, in a dynamic and rapidly changing social milieu. Close attention is given to themes of deposition, material culture and different kinds of social interaction, from networks of exchange to episodes of violence. A high tempo of change continued, as very different constructions came to be built from the 36th century cal BC onwards: the linear and more arcane cursus monuments. The study of Irish Neolithic chronology reveals significant patterning, including a short currency for rectangular timber houses in the 37th century cal BC, but also highlights the challenge of establishing more reliable chronologies, for monuments in particular. Alternative scenarios for the date and nature of the beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland are modelled. Gathering Time ends with reflections on the nature and pace of change in prehistory. If generational timescales are now within our grasp routinely, more subtle and individualised kinds of (pre)history can and must be written, and the conventional frame of the long-term must shift from being familiar and comfortable to problematic.

RRP: £45.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 354

ISBN: 9781842174425

Pub Date: 03 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: colour and black and white illustrations throughout

Description:

Oceans Odyssey 2 presents the results of the discovery and archaeological survey of ten deep-water wrecks by Odyssey Marine Exploration. In the Western Approaches and western English Channel, a mid-17th century armed merchantman, the guns of Admiral Balchin's Victory (1744), the mid-18th century French privateer La Marquise de Tourny and six German U-boats lost at the end of World War II are examined in depth. From the Atlantic coast of the United States, the Jacksonville 'Blue China' wreck's British ceramics, tobacco pipes and American glass wares bring to life the story of a remarkable East Coast schooner lost in the mid-19th century.

RRP: £25.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 120

ISBN: 9781842174227

Pub Date: 17 May 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

This volume of 15 papers is a tribute to Petros Themelis for his significant contribution to Greek archaeology and especially to the excavation, study and conservation to the ancient site of Messene in the Peloponnese. An international cast of scholars has contributed essays on a wide range of subjects (Greek sculpture, epigraphy and architecture), which reflect the interests of the honorand. New, previously unpublished material from Messenia, Athens and elsewhere is here presented for the first time.

RRP: £32.00

Exotica in the Prehistoric Mediterranean Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 216

ISBN: 9781842174241

Pub Date: 15 May 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 8 pages of colour illustrations, b/w illustrations

Description:

This book examines how exotic materials were exchanged and used across the Mediterranean from the Neolithic era to the Iron Age, focusing on the Bronze Age. A variety of materials and interpretative approaches are presented through several case studies. These emphasise how the value of exotic materials depended on the context in which they were consumed.

Format:

Hardback Paperback

Pages: 344

ISBN: 9781842174302

Pub Date: 15 May 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w & col illus

Pages: 336

ISBN: 9781789258813

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2022

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: B/w and colour

Description:

Recent research on all aspects of the Old Kingdom in Egypt is presented in this volume, ranging through the Pyramid Texts, tomb architecture, ceramics, scene choice and layout, field reports, cemetery layout, tomb and temple statuary. The contributions also show how Egyptology is not stuck in its venerable traditions but that newer forms of technology are being used to great effect by Egyptologists. For example, two papers show how GIS technology can shed light on cemetery arrangement and how 3D scanners can be employed in the process of producing facsimile drawings of reliefs and inscriptions.

RRP: £38.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 200

ISBN: 9781842179840

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 99 illus

Description:

Even after more than 250 years since its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure. The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 102

ISBN: 9781842179963

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Well Built Mycenae

Illustrations: DVD

Description:

The post-palatial period - Late Helladic IIIC - is often seen as the twilight years of Mycenean civilisation, a period of economic decline with few achievements in terms of architecture, materials or technology. Excavation in the Citadel House area at Mycenae afforded unique opportunities to explore stratified remains of this period and to define and describe its character. In this fascicule, Dr.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9781842174524

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: TRAC

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

This volume contains ten papers reflecting current aspects of the debate in theoretical Roman archaeology. They include papers on what the pottery finds from the Nepi Survey Project can tell us about how the local landscape was used and inhabited, poliadic deities in Roman colonies in Italy, Pompeii, the practice of the recycling of architectural materials and personal adornment concerning textile remains and brooches.

RRP: £36.00

Late Quaternary Landscape Evolution of the Swale-Ure Washlands, North Yorkshire Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 336

ISBN: 9781842173749

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 16 pages of col illus, CD

Description:

Reporting on a multi-disciplinary project this book seeks to reconstruct the history since the last glaciation of the area between and including the middle reaches of the Rivers Swale and Ure in Yorkshire. Included in this history are both natural changes, determined from studies of landforms and sediments, and human-induced changes, recorded in archaeological and geo-archaeological records. The work is set in the context of previous research and pre-existing knowledge, outlined in an introductory chapter.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9781842179970

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

This book examines how the study of human-animal relations can help us interpret archaeological evidence. An international range of contributors examines fishing, hunting and husbandry, slaughtering and butchering, ceremonial and ritual practices and techniques of deposition and disposal in traditional societies. Topics covered include the theoretical potential of ethnographic research for zooarchaeology, the use of comparative analogies in the ethnographic and zooarchaeological records, the historical developments of ethnozooarchaeology and specific case studies selected from across the world.

RRP: £48.00

Current Research in Egyptology 11 (2010) Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 216

ISBN: 9781842174296

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Current Research in Egyptology

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

After having been held in the UK for the past 10 years, the 11th edition of the annual Current Research in Egyptology (CRE) graduate conference was held at Leiden University, The Netherlands in January 2010. As always, the main aim of the conference was to provide graduate and postgraduate students of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology with the opportunity to present their research. The proceedings of this year's conference cover a wide range of topics from the Predynastic Period to modern Egypt.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 248

ISBN: 9781842179734

Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 124 illus

Description:

It is now widely accepted that by the later Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals possessed a wide range of social and practical skills. More recently, researchers have become interested in how these skills actually emerged; in effect, the challenge now is to document the process by which Middle Pleistocene hominids "became Neanderthals". This book explores the development of classically Neanderthal behaviours in Europe between MIS 9-6, focusing on the British record, especially stone tools as durable residues of human action.

Culture, Chronology and the Chalcolithic Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9781842179932

Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Levant Supplementary Series

Illustrations: 87 b/w & col illus

Description:

To some, the Chalcolithic (4700/4500-3700/3600 BC cal.), as the first period with metallurgy, large sprawling villages, rich mortuary offerings, and cult centres, represents a developmental stage on the road to the urban Bronze Age, the "dawn of history". Others have called it 'the end of prehistory'.

RRP: £40.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9781842173763

Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Studies in Funerary Archaeology

Illustrations: 79 b/w illustrations and maps

Description:

This volume investigates the archaeology of death and commemoration through thematically linked case studies drawn from the Classical world. These investigations stress the processes of burial and commemoration as inherently social and designed for an audience, and they explore the meaning and importance attached to preserving memory. While previous investigations of Greek and Roman death and burial have tended to concentrate on period- or regionally-specific sets of data, this volume instead focuses on a series of topical connections that highlight important facets of death and commemoration significant to the larger Classical world.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 312

ISBN: 9781935488262

Pub Date: 28 Mar 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Comparative Archaeologies scrutinises current thinking on the dynamics and historical trajectories of complex societies in the American Southwest (AD 900-1600) and the Iberian Peninsula (3000-1500 BC) through a focused comparison of five themes: Histories, Landscapes, Bodies, Gender, and Art. Leading archaeologists from North America and Europe - drawing on diverse intellectual traditions - engage in this innovative form of comparative archaeology which recognizes both the historicities of past societies of similar forms and the social embeddedness of archaeological practice and theory.

RRP: £45.00