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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.

Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery and Palettes Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 68
ISBN: 9798888570180
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
Facsimile edition of the 1974 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1921 corpus of prehistoric pottery and slate palettes from pre-dynastic, prehistoric Egypt. The pottery corpus was produced separately to accompany the catalogue of Egyptian artifacts in the volume Prehistoric Egypt and comprises hundreds of line drawings illustrating the shapes, forms and types of decoration. It was intended to be a ‘graveside’ aid for use during excavation, with the intent that it be used with record cards to classify and date pottery that could then be returned to the grave.
Archaeology Without Digging Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781789259261
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Over the last 30 years, the Connecticut Office of State Archaeology and the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service have entered into a partnership employing ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to the study of the state’s archaeology and history. As a result, many historical cemeteries and places of note in Connecticut have been investigated. The authors have selected 10 geophysical surveys, which have used GPR as a non-intrusive, non-destructive exploratory tool, that have elicited positive results in the search for unmarked burials, confirmation of marked burials and to authenticate areas of known historical events.
Amulets Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9798888570005
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated with photographs and illustrations
Description:
This facsimile edition of the 1972 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1914 pioneering typological catalogue of Egyptian amulets, is one of a number of such catalogues to be reissued in this new series. Remarkably – although points of detail emanating from more recent research have surfaced – it remains unsurpassed in its comprehensive description, typological classification, and interpretation. While an absence of reasoned argument for the dating of his various groups is a weak point of Petrie’s study from the point of view of modern scholarship, his attention to detail and careful consideration of typology and potential meaning, borne of decades of observation, means that this, and the other catalogues in the series, remain as invaluable reference books for Egyptologists.
Ancient Weights and Measures Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 110
ISBN: 9798888570104
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated
Description:
This facsimile volume of detailed catalogues prepared by Sir Flinders Petrie of ancient weights and measures, is based on examination of over 4,000 Egyptian weights within his collections. Eight standards have been identified and are described. The text discusses forms, multiples and fractions of standard weights, materials, and evidence for the adoption of different standards.
Brooches in Late Iron Age and Roman Britain Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 456
ISBN: 9781789259889
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 154 B/w images
Description:
The result of forty years of study, this book offers an overview of the most common find, after coins, on sites in Roman Britain – the brooch. Used basically to hold outer clothing together, it was always on view and was usually decorative. This significant work is based on the study of some 15,000 specimens.
Buttons and Design Scarabs Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 68
ISBN: 9798888570043
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated with photographs and illustrations
Description:
This facsimile reissue of Flinders Petrie’s extensive catalog of buttons and scarabs describes and illustrates over 1500 examples, along with an appendix on additions to the ‘Scarabs and Cylinders’ volume published earlier. In keeping with his other object catalogs, Petrie devises object classifications based on form with an attempt at dating their sequences. He describes the back of the objects, materials, their designs and inscriptions, and offers ideas on their meanings.
Circuits of Metal Value Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789259612
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology
Illustrations: B&W and Color images
Description:
This volume explores the part played by different metals in use from the fourth millennium BC to the Early Iron Age, not only in the Aegean but also in the wider Old World. It addresses the divergent uses and roles of different metals, the interrelationships of these roles and the changing values that may have been accorded to them at different times and in different places by producers and consumers. Individually, the papers in the volume contemplate the particular properties of different metals and the various issues concerning their frequent under-representation in the archaeological (but not necessarily textual) record, and also point out comparative and diachronic perspectives that may have the ability to offer insights into their important roles in wider cultural and historical changes over a period of several millennia.
Glass Stamps and Weights Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 58
ISBN: 9798888570081
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated with photographs and line drawings
Description:
A facsimile volume of a detailed catalogue prepared by Flinders Petrie on artifacts largely collected from his Egyptian explorations of a series of glass stamps of Egyptian manufacture that were used from the Roman to Abbasid period variously as tokens, counters, weights, or attached to glass cups as indications of measure. Various categories are identified and described, makers’ names discussed, and weight standards considered. Over 700 stamps are illustrated both as photographs and transcribed line drawings.
Objects of Daily Use Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 110
ISBN: 9798888570128
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated
Description:
A facsimile edition of the 1974 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s fully illustrated 1927 description and catalogue of personal and everyday Egyptian and Roman objects in his collections. Jewellery items include necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, many made from precious metals and/or incorporating gemstones or beads. Toilet items include mirrors, combs, kohl pots, and sticks.
Religious Individualisation Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781789259650
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B&W images
Description:
The Roman world was diverse and complex. And so were religious understandings and practices as mirrored in the enormous variety presented by archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic evidence. Conventional approaches principally focus on the political role of civic cults as a means of social cohesion, often considered to be instrumentalised by elites.
Scarabs and Cylinders (with Names) Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 130
ISBN: 9798888570029
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated with photographs and line drawings
Description:
Facsimile edition of the 1974 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1917 pioneering typological catalogue of Egyptian name-scarabs and cylinders, one of a number of such catalogues to be reissued in this new series. The beetle form of amulets are common finds on Egyptian sites but examples with engraved names represent a small proportion of the total. Over 240 different royal persons are named among the various major museum collections.
Shabtis Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 68
ISBN: 9798888570067
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Illustrations: Fully illustrated with photographs
Description:
This is a facsimile edition of the 1972 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1914 pioneering typological catalogue of Egyptian Shabtis, one of a number of such catalogues to be reissued in this new series. Shabtis, funeral statuettes made of stone or timber, were frequently encountered in early tomb and cemetery excavations. Petrie identified and describes a chronological sequence of development from simple statuettes emphasising the head, which appear to be substitutes for real heads that were often removed from the body, through to later detailed forms that he recognised as substitutes for the mummy.
Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789259292
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
Illustrations: 55 B/W images
Description:
In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years.
Knossos, Mycenae, Troy Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781789259476
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
This book charts the rise of and interplay between the first Mediterranean civilisations – with particular reference to the Minoan, Cycladic, Mycenaean and Trojan – and on the causes of their decline, which are identified in a jumble of natural and human causes, and in a slow, but irreversible crisis. It takes into account that the Mediterranean Dimension of the Bronze Age is a garden in which many legends flourished, clearly distinguishing between myth and history. Using written sources and archaeological evidence, it charts these civilisations' fortunes and crises, and the wars and natural disasters that led to their decline.
Ancient DNA and the European Neolithic Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781789259100
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Illustrations: B/W
Description:
The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic.
Breaking Images Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9781789259148
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)
Illustrations: B/W
Description:
Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris of past civilisations. It is rare that things have been preserved as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past.
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