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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.

Ancient Textiles Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781782978305
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Illustrations: b/w and col illus
Description:
An understanding of textiles and the role they played in the past is important for anyone interested in past societies. Textiles served and in fact still do as both functional and symbolic items. The evidence for ancient textiles in Europe is split quite definitely along a north-south divide, with an abundance of actual examples in the north, but precious little in the south, where indirect evidence comes from such things as vase painting and frescoes.
Celtic Art in Europe Cover Celtic Art in Europe Cover
Format: 
Hardback Paperback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9781782976554
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illustrations, 32pp colour illustrations
Pages: 416
ISBN: 9781789253832
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illustrations, 32pp colour illustrations
Description:
The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history.
Paths to Complexity Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9781782977230
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illustrations
Description:
Exploring the origins of urbanism – the emergence and development of the first cities, has long constituted one of the main challenges of archaeological and ancient historical research. Studying cities in a long-term and cross-cultural perspective links the past with the present, allowing a better understanding of one of the most important developments in human history. Moreover, archaeological research on ancient cities can contribute to a better understanding of contemporary processes of urbanisation.
RRP: £65.00
Animal Secondary Products Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781782974017
Pub Date: 24 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illustrations
Description:
Animal Secondary Products investigates domestic animal exploitation and the animal economy from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages across Eurasia (Europe, Near East, Siberia and China). Incorporating current zooarchaeological theory and cutting-edge methodological developments, it critically assesses Andrew Sherratt’s concept of a Secondary Products Revolution that proposed that a package of new subsistence practices and technologies swept across much of Eurasia at the end of the Neolithic, which triggered large-scale changes in economies and settlement across the landscape. This model argues that these changes were associated with a genuine shift from an emphasis upon domestic animals for their primary (meat hide, bone) products to a more diversified exploitation pattern which included their secondary (milk, wool, traction) products.
RRP: £65.00
Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 446
ISBN: 9781782972358
Pub Date: 16 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
There are many recoverable aspects and indications concerning medicine and healing in the ancient past – from the archaeological evidence of skeletal remains, grave-goods comprising medical and/or surgical equipment and visual representations in tombs and other monuments thorough to epigraphic and literary sources. The 42 papers presented here cover many aspects medicine in the Mediterranean world during Antiquity and early Byzantine times, bringing together both internationally established specialists on the history of medicine and researchers in the early stages of their career. The contributions are grouped under a series of headings: medicine and archaeology; media (online access to electronic corpus); the Aegean; medical authors/schools of medicine; surgery; medicaments and cures; skeletal remains; new research in Cyprus; Asklepios and incubation; and Byzantine, Arab and medieval sources.
RRP: £65.00
Excavations at Cill Donnain Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781782976271
Pub Date: 09 Sep 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides
Illustrations: 190 images, 63 tables
Description:
The SEARCH (Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides) project began in 1987 and covers the Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. The aim of the project is to investigate how human societies adapted in the long-term to the isolated environment of the Outer Hebrides. The first major excavation on South Uist discovered that what was thought to be a shell midden at Cill Donnain was in fact a wheelhouse, a type of dwelling used in the period c.
RRP: £25.00
Athenian Potters and Painters III Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781782976639
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w images and 2 colour plate sections
Description:
Athenian Potters and Painters III presents a rich mass of new material on Greek vases, including finds from excavations at the Kerameikos in Athens and Despotiko in the Cyclades. Some contributions focus on painters or workshops – Paseas, the Robinson Group, and the structure of the figured pottery industry in Athens; others on vase forms – plates, phialai, cups, and the change in shapes at the end of the sixth century BC. Context, trade, kalos inscriptions, reception, the fabrication of inscribed painters’ names to create a fictitious biography, and the reconstruction of the contents of an Etruscan tomb are also explored.
RRP: £80.00
The Roman Textile Industry and its influence Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781782977407
Pub Date: 29 Aug 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 4 col pls, illus
Description:
Textiles were a hugely important Roman industry yet, because of their perishable nature, only fragments remain. These twenty-two essays provide a detailed study of surviving fragments from across the Roman world, from the dry sands of Egypt to the Atlantic coast and the northern frontiers and beyond. The result is a comprehensive reconstruction of both everyday and exotic Roman clothing with information about the influences of fashion and of Roman weaving techniques.
Quaternary of the Trent Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 416
ISBN: 9781842174616
Pub Date: 20 Aug 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 16p colour DVD
Description:
This volume is an integrated overview and synthesis of available data relating to the Quaternary evolution of the River Trent. It provides detailed descriptions of the Pleistocene sedimentary records from the Trent, its tributaries and related drainage systems - a sedimentary record that spans a period of approximately half a million years - and the biostratigraphical and archaeological material preserved therein. Significant new data are presented from recently discovered sites of geological and archaeological importance, including previously unrecognised fluvial deposits, as well as novel analyses, such as mathematical modelling of fluvial incision as recorded by the river terrace deposits.
RRP: £30.00
Of Rocks and Water Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 270
ISBN: 9781782976714
Pub Date: 11 Aug 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Joukowsky Institute Publication
Description:
People are drawn to places where geology performs its miracles: ice-cold spring waters gushing from the rock, mysterious caves which act as conduits for ancestors and divinities traveling back and forth to the underworld, sacred bodies of water where communities make libations and offer sacrifices. This volume presents a series of archaeological landscapes from the Iranian highlands to the Anatolian Plateau, and from the Mediterranean borderlands to Mesoamerica. Contributors all have a deep interest in the making and the long-term history of unorthodox places of human interaction with the mineral world, specifically the landscapes of rocks and water.
Coptic Documentary Texts From Kellis Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781782976516
Pub Date: 05 Aug 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Dakhleh Oasis Project Monographs
Illustrations: b/w illustrations +CD of photographs
Description:
This is the second volume on fourth century Coptic documents written on papyri and boards, found in the ruins of houses at Kellis, the Roman predecessor of the village of Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis. It is concerned with 75 letters and associated household accounts and lists, mostly from House 3. The documents are transcribed and translated with commentary.
RRP: £75.00
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781782976431
Pub Date: 31 Jul 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations.
Oceans Odyssey 4. Pottery from the Tortugas Shipwreck, Straits of Florida Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781782977100
Pub Date: 31 Jul 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The Tortugas shipwreck excavated at a depth of 405 meters in the Straits of Florida contained a major collection of 3,800 intact and fragmentary olive jars, tablewares, cooking vessels and tobacco pipes. Identified as the Portuguese-built and Spanish-operated 117-ton Buen Jesús y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, the ship’s Seville dominated tablewares are a revealing index of unchanged cultural tastes and continued production at the end of Spain’s Golden Age. For cooking the crew relied on Afro-Caribbean colonoware, possibly the first recorded archaeological evidence of maritime slavery in the Americas fleets.
RRP: £30.00
Sveti Pavao Shipwreck Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781782977063
Pub Date: 03 Jul 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
Between 2007 and 2012 the Department for Underwater Archaeology of the Croatian Conservation Institute from Zagreb and the Department of Humanistic Studies of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice collaborated in the recording, underwater excavation and analysis of the unusually well-preserved wreck of a 16th century Venetian merchantman in the Svetti Pavao shallow off the southern shore of the island of Mljet, Croatia. The shipwreck preserved many personal possessions of the crew as well as a number of bronze artillery pieces and the remains of a cargo of luxury and richly decorated ceramic material from Iznik and other oriental workshops.Although the excavation is not complete, this volume presents the results of the project so far.
RRP: £40.00
Art, Artisans and Apprentices Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 536
ISBN: 9781782977421
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 136 b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
Before the foundation of academies of art in London in 1768 and Philadelphia in 1805, most individuals who were to emerge as artists trained in workshops of varying degrees of relevance. Easel painters began their careers apprenticed to carriage, house, sign or ship painters, whilst a few were placed with those who made pictures. Sculptors emerged from a training as ornamental plasterers or carvers.
The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650 Cover The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650 Cover
Format: 
Hardback Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781782976127
Pub Date: 04 Jun 2014
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and col. illustrations
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781785709708
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and col. illustrations
Description:
The Tribal Hidage, attributed to the 7th century, records the named groups and polities of early Anglo-Saxon England and the taxation tribute due from their lands and surpluses. Whilst providing some indication of relative wealth and its distribution, rather little can be deduced from the Hidage concerning the underlying economic and social realities of the communities documented. Sue Harrington and the late Martin Welch have adopted a new approach to these issues, based on archaeological information from 12,000 burials and 28,000 objects of the period AD 450–650.
RRP: £40.00
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