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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.

City Walls in Late Antiquity Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781789253641
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The construction of urban defences was one of the hallmarks of the late Roman and late-antique periods (300–600 AD) throughout the western and eastern empire. City walls were the most significant construction projects of their time and they redefined the urban landscape. Their appearance and monumental scale, as well as the cost of labour and material, are easily comparable to projects from the High Empire; however, urban circuits provided late-antique towns with a new means of self-representation.
Collapse and Transformation Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781789254259
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The years c. 1250 to 1150 BC in Greece and the Aegean are often characterised as a time of crisis and collapse. A critical period in the long history of the region and its people and culture, they witnessed the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, with their palaces and Linear B records, and, through the Postpalatial period, the transition into the Early Iron Age.
Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards in Britain Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9781785708558
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
More coin hoards have been recorded from Roman Britain than from any other province of the Empire. This comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume provides a survey of over 3260 hoards of Iron Age and Roman coins found in England and Wales with a detailed analysis and discussion.Theories of hoarding and deposition and examined, national and regional patterns in the landscape settings of coin hoards presented, together with an analysis of those hoards whose findspots were surveyed and of those hoards found in archaeological excavations.
The Competition of Fibres Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781789254297
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Illustrations: Colour
Description:
The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here. Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe.
The Fight for Greek Sicily Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9781789253566
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The island of Sicily was a highly contested area throughout much of its history. Among the first to exert strong influence on its political, cultural, infrastructural, and demographic developments were the two major decentralized civilizations of the first millennium BCE: the Phoenicians and the Greeks. While trade and cultural exchange preceded their permanent presence, it was the colonizing movement that brought territorial competition and political power struggles on the island to a new level.
Beyond the Romans Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781789251364
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: TRAC Themes in Archaeology
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
This third volume in the TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology series offers a new encounter between posthumanism and Roman archaeology. Posthuman theoretical perspectives have had substantial impacts in various fields, including archaeology, critical studies, and feminist studies, but only recently have emerged in the study of the ancient world. Posthumanism is an umbrella term for a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives that critique humanism, de-centre the human subject, reconsider the boundaries and relations among humans and the natural world, and frame the human condition as non-fixed and variable.
RRP: £40.00
Dariali: The 'Caspian Gates' in the Caucasus from Antiquity to the Age of the Huns and the Middle Ages Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 1088
ISBN: 9781789251920
Pub Date: 25 Mar 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: British Institute of Persian Studies Archaeological Monograph Series
Illustrations: 700 black and white & colour images
Description:
The Huns, invading through Dariali Gorge on the modern-day border between Russia and Georgia in AD 395 and 515, spread terror across the late antique world. Was this the prelude to the apocalypse? Prophecies foresaw a future Hunnic onslaught, via the same mountain pass, bringing about the end of the world.
Art in the Archaeological Imagination Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781789253528
Pub Date: 01 Mar 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
The present volume shows the archaeological thinking as a form of art, revealing the poetics of the archaeological imagination. It shows that, in their work, archaeologists, without being inspired by contemporary artists, use creative methods, and their analysis of the art of the Past goes beyond the material culture of the art objects, into the realm of the mental processes of creation. Consequently, the purpose of this book is to present the archaeological research functioning as a sort of artistic creation, proposing new perspectives on the archaeological imagination.
RRP: £36.00
Animals and Archaeology in Northern Medieval Russia Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9781842172773
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus and accompanying CD with supporting data
Description:
This is the third book on material studies in this series on medieval Novgorod and its territory, and deals with a substantial body of animal bones that has been recovered over the last decade. The zooarchaeological evidence is discussed by the editor and a number of other British and Russian specialists looking at the remains of mammals, birds and fish. Topics discussed include diet, butchery practices, the exploitation of fur and skins, mortality patterns of mammals, and metrical analyses of a wide range of species.
RRP: £65.00
Debasement Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781789253986
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The debasement of coinage, particularly of silver, was a common feature of pre-modern monetary systems. Most coinages were issued by state authorities and the condition of a coinage is often seen (rightly or wrongly) as an indicator of the broader fiscal health of the state that produced it. While in some cases the motives behind the debasements or reductions in standards are clear, in many cases the intentions of the issuing authorities are uncertain.
RRP: £50.00
Ecology of a Tool Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781789253863
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Archéo Logiques
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
New Guinea, and especially Papua New Guinea, is the last country in the world where ethnologists were able to closely observe, film and photograph the whole manufacturing chaînes opératoires of polished stone felling tools, from quarry extraction to finished tool use. Research on the polished blades of PNG has evolved over the years, following changing philosophies and research agendas. While it is clear that an exceptional sum of information has been gathered, it remains centered on that small part of the Highlands where conditions for field research were more pleasant than elsewhere.
RRP: £45.00
Farmers at the Frontier Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9781789251401
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
All farming in prehistoric Europe ultimately came from elsewhere in one way or another, unlike the growing numbers of primary centers of domestication and agricultural origins worldwide. This fact affects every aspect of our understanding of the start of farming on the continent because it means that ultimately, domesticated plants and animals came from somewhere else, and from someone else. In an area as vast as Europe, the process by which food production becomes the predominant subsistence strategy is of course highly variable, but in a sense the outcome is the same, and has the potential for addressing more large-scale questions regarding agricultural origins.
The People of the Cobra Province in Egypt Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781789254211
Pub Date: 25 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 100 b/w
Description:
The book delivers a history from below for the first half of Egyptian history covering the earliest settlements, state formation and the pyramid age. The focus is on the Wadjet province, about 350 km south of modern Cairo in Upper Egypt. Here archaeological records provide an especially rich dataset for the material culture of farmers.
RRP: £55.00
Death and Changing Rituals Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9781789253818
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Studies in Funerary Archaeology
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration.
RRP: £35.00
Houses of the Dead? Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781789254105
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Description:
The chronological disjuncture, LBK longhouses have widely been considered to provide ancestral influence for both rectangular and trapezoidal long barrows and cairns, but with the discovery and excavation of more houses in recent times is it possible to observe evidence of more contemporary inspiration. What do the features found beneath long mounds tell us about this and to what extent do they represent domestic structures. Indeed, how can we distinguish between domestic houses or halls and those that may have been constructed for ritual purposes or ended up beneath mounds?
An Archaeological History of Montserrat in the West Indies Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781789253900
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 90 colour and 24 b/w images
Description:
Montserrat is a small island in the Leeward islands of the eastern Caribbean and at present a British Overseas Territory. It has suffered greatly in recent times, first from the devastations of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and since 1995 from the still-ongoing eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano that has caused two-thirds of the island’s population to emigrate and left half the island a dangerous exclusion zone. Archaeological research here began only in the late 1970s, but work over the past four decades has now made it possible to present an archaeological history of Montserrat, from the earliest known traces of human activity on the island about 5,000 years ago to the present.
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