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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.

Cladh Hallan: Roundhouses and the Dead in the Hebridean Bronze Age and Iron Age Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9798888571163
Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides
Illustrations: 200 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
This second of two volumes presents archaeological and scientific studies of a wide range of materials from the unusually long-occupied Bronze Age and Iron Age site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. These include metalworking debris, copper-alloy, gold and iron artifacts, bone and antler tools and ornaments, flint and quartz tools, coarse stone tools, pumice, shale ornaments and fuel ash slag. The metalworking assemblage, from casting weapons, tools and ornaments, is exceptional in its size and in its being stratified within a domestic context of production.
RRP: £39.95

Landscape and Society in Dumnonia

Iron Age, Roman, and Early Medieval Ipplepen and the Countryside of South-West England
Format: Hardback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9781789259773
Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 210 B/W and colour illustrations
Description:
This book explores the distinctive landscape and society of South-West England that had emerged by the Iron Age and which continued to develop during the Roman and medieval periods. A focus of the research was the long-term programme of survey and excavation on the Iron Age, Roman, and early medieval settlement at Dainton Elms Cross, in Ipplepen (Devon), which included the only Roman roadside settlement to have seen extensive excavation to the south and west of Exeter on the very edge of the Roman empire, as well as a substantial early medieval cemetery. First discovered through the reporting of an unusual concentration of Roman finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the site was investigated through a joint university and community project led by the University of Exeter in partnership with the British Museum/PAS, Devon County Council, and Cotswold Archaeology.
RRP: £50.00
Landscapes of (Re)Conquest Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9798888570692
Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 250 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
Frontiers were an integral feature of every medieval polity, and their spaces were defined by opposing spheres of influence, contact and connectivity. As these polities expanded and contracted, often as a result of military conquest and territorial annexation, their permeable edges became defined by transformative cultural landscapes. Here, the encounters between native or resident and incoming populations, from small elite groups through to larger numbers of migrants from diverse social backgrounds, resulted in varying degrees of cultural hybridity.
RRP: £60.00
Early Insular Art at the Crossroads Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888571064
Pub Date: 01 Jun 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 120 B/W and colour illustrations
Description:
This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects.
RRP: £42.00
Early Insular Art at the Crossroads Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9798888571088
Pub Date: 01 Jun 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 90 B/W and colour illustrations
Description:
This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects.
RRP: £40.00
The Parish Churches of Medieval Norwich Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544
ISBN: 9798888571828
Pub Date: 16 May 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: max 500
Description:
Eight hundred years ago, there were 56 parish churches in Norwich. Thirty-one remain standing – the greatest concentration of medieval churches in any town or city north of the Alps. Most retain medieval furnishings and monuments, painting and glazing, and about a quarter of them are of the very highest quality in terms of materials and design.
RRP: £35.00
Exploring Death Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888571415
Pub Date: 15 May 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Studies in Funerary Archaeology
Illustrations: 180 b/w and color illustrations
Description:
Since the dawn of archaeology, the study of funerary contexts has provided invaluable insights into past societies, a trend that persists in contemporary research. Ongoing discoveries, site reevaluations, and advancements in techniques like DNA analysis continually reshape our understanding of the past.In the specific contexts we are addressing – the emergence of the first farming and herding communities in the Western Mediterranean – few regions in Europe display such systematic funerary practices.
RRP: £55.00
Butrint 8 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571323
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Butrint Archaeological Monographs
Illustrations: 100 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
Butrint 8 is largely devoted to the Middle Byzantine archaeology discovered by the Butrint Foundation’s projects at Butrint itself, in its environs, and in the nearby port of Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. The volume includes a full report on the excavations in Butrint’s western defenses, built in the 6th century as a proteichisma, and maintained in use until the 9th century when tower 1 partly perished in a fire and tower 2 was abandoned. From these 9th-century levels came a major assemblage of traded and local ceramics as well as glass cullet.
RRP: £42.00
Colonisation and Christianity Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789259674
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B&W and Color images
Description:
A joint Icelandic–US archaeological project in North Iceland examined the development of the farmstead settlement pattern from the initial Norse settlement of Iceland in c. AD 870–1300. The results were compared with the distribution of early Christian household cemeteries following the conversion in AD 1000 and the later institutionalization of the Catholic church in the 12th century.
RRP: £50.00
Obsidian Vessels in the Prehistoric and Early Historic Near East Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9798888570623
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 360 b/w and color imgaes
Description:
Obsidian, a shiny volcanic glass, was first used to make vessels in the mid-sixth millennium BC in the Near East, although other stone had been exploited for vessel manufacture since the thirteenth millennium BC. Unlike the stone used to make the earliest vessels, which was acquired from local and regional sources, obsidian had to be obtained from volcanoes located hundreds of kilometers from where vessels were made and used. The obsidian from these sources had long been exploited for making tools and by the tenth millennium BC obsidian artifacts can be found in communities located far distant from the sources.
RRP: £45.00
Art, Image, Power and Place Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789258981
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/W and colour
Description:
Early medieval stone sculptures survive across Europe: at waysides, in architectural settings and in churches and graveyards, and provide an exceptional source for understanding the aesthetics and beliefs of early medieval communities. England is no exception to this. Thousands of intact and fragmentary stone monuments survive from the seventh to eleventh centuries CE, evidencing the emergence of a rich Anglo-Saxon sculptural tradition in stone.
RRP: £50.00
Threads of Contact Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571477
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Illustrations: 50 b/w drawings and photographs, 25 colour photographs, charts. maps
Description:
Textile tools offer a fascinating and yet intimate approach to ancient people. Textile production has been one of the core activities for millennia, spanning from domestic production to royal needs. Textiles were light and easy to transport goods, often exchanged over long distances.
RRP: £40.00
Greek and Roman Pottery from Sphakia, South-West Crete Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9798888570500
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Cretan Studies: New Approaches and Perspectives in the Study of Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Crete
Illustrations: 350 B/W illustrations
Description:
This volume presents the Greek and Roman pottery collected and analyzed by the Sphakia Survey project and provides a ceramic model for a large section of western Crete, where ceramic traditions, both domestic and imported, are little known. This research integrates two approaches. It first presents a morphological and functional study of a body of pottery from a sizable part of Crete with little known archaeological evidence.
RRP: £65.00
Reconstructing Past Monastic Life: Volume 1: Bioarchaeology, Life and Death Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9798888571736
Pub Date: 14 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 100 B/W photos and line illustrations
Description:
Monasticism is a form of religious life in which participants renounce worldly activities to dedicate themselves primarily to spiritual matters, living in small communities subject to a set of rules and isolated from the secular world. Christian monasticism, which originated at the end of the 3rd century in Egypt and North Africa, spread to different parts of Europe in the 6th century. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that monastic communities became one of the most powerful institutions in Europe.
RRP: £48.00
Reconstructing Past Monastic Life: Volume 2: Diet, Landscape and Monastic Space Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571750
Pub Date: 14 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: ma 190 b/w photos and line illustrations
Description:
Monasticism is a form of religious life in which participants renounce worldly activities to dedicate themselves primarily to spiritual matters, living in small communities subject to a set of rules and isolated from the secular world. Christian monasticism, which originated at the end of the 3rd century in Egypt and North Africa, spread to different parts of Europe in the 6th century. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that monastic communities became one of the most powerful institutions in Europe.
RRP: £48.00
Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9798888571842
Pub Date: 21 Feb 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Maritime Encounters
Illustrations: 120 b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape.
RRP: £55.00
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