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 Effigy Mound Landscapes of Upper Midwestern North America Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781785700873

Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: black/white and colour illustrations

Description:

Between c. AD 700 and 1100, Late Woodland people of the Upper Midwest used the topography and other features of the natural landscape to create vast ceremonial landscapes consisting of thousands of earthen mounds sculpted into animals and animal spirits that mirrored their belief and clan-based social structure and that served an important role in mortuary ritual. In so doing, the Late Woodland people created quite visible three-dimensional maps of ancient cosmology and social structures that are similar to the beliefs and social systems of more recent Indian people.

RRP: £38.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 256

ISBN: 9781789259902

Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 120 B/W illustrations

Description:

Land was the ideal store of wealth in the ancient Mediterranean world. It brought social respectability, and its possession allowed participation in the politics of the cities governed by landowning elites. Crucial defense of the interests of a given polity through armed services often involved the distribution of lands to laborers still not integrated in these societies.

RRP: £50.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 304

ISBN: 9798888571804

Pub Date: 18 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 160 B/W and color illustrations

Description:

Modern archaeological research carried out since the late 19th century has sufficiently demonstrated that the beginning of the food production economy and the establishment of a farming society had a significant impact on the shaping of subsequent human history. Accordingly, these processes of Neolithization have attracted a great deal of interest from archaeologists and anthropologists worldwide. The South Caucasus, i. e. the region discussed in this book, has remained one of the least studied regions in a modern sense. However, the research situation has improved remarkably since the 2000s, for a number of reasons, above all the increasing efforts of local and international archaeologists in collaboration.Since 2008, the Azerbaijan–Japan Archaeological Mission has played a major role in elucidating the origins and developments of the earliest farming communities in the South Caucasus, conducting a series of field campaigns in West Azerbaijan. The remarkable achievements made thus far include the establishment of a secure chronological framework for understanding the Neolithization processes in the early 6th millennium BC through the excavations of two important Neolithic sites: Göytepe and Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe in the Tovuz region, representing the early and late phases of the Neolithic of the South Caucasus, respectively, dating from the early 6th millennium BC.This volume presents a set of archaeological evidence obtained from the Azerbaijan–Japan excavations in 2016–2022 at Damjili Cave, West Azerbaijan. The cave contained cultural layers from the Mesolithic period in particular, along with Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and medieval material indicating a very long sequence of use. Earlier explorers recorded Middle Palaeolithic lithic artifacts, though no tools of this period were recovered during the recent program of work. Ten small trenches were excavated, revealing a considerable depth of deposits. Mesolithic lithic materials provided evidence for obsidian blade production. Neolithic levels, that included some amorphous limestone block structures, hearths and pits, produced flaked and ground stone tools, pottery and bone objects. Part of the cave at least was utilized in the medieval period with evidence for some built structures and several burials. A program of environmental sampling and both radiocarbon and luminescence dating were undertaken. Through combining the records of the late (Göytepe), early Neolithic (Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe), and Mesolithic (Damjili Cave) periods, our understanding of the Neolithization processes of the South Caucasus will be greatly improved. Data from a combination of three chronologically different sites provide the first opportunity to observe Neolithization processes with secure stratigraphic evidence in a small region of West Azerbaijan.

RRP: £55.00

Egyptian Stelae, Reliefs and Paintings from the Petrie Collection Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 138

ISBN: 9798888571248

Pub Date: 17 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

This is a facsimile reissue of part I of H.M. Stewart’s three part complete catalogue of the inscribed stelae, reliefs and paintings acquired by Flinders Petrie from his many Egyptian excavations and intended as a teaching collection.

RRP: £34.99

Format: Paperback

Pages: 110

ISBN: 9798888571286

Pub Date: 17 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

This is a facsimile reissue of part III of H.M Stewart’s three part complete catalogue of the inscribed stelae, reliefs and paintings acquired by Flinders Petrie from his many Egyptian excavations and intended as a teaching collection. Over 140 monuments, primarily of the Late Period are described, translated and illustrated with comments on techniques and materials, and details of provenance, date and bibliographical references.

RRP: £24.95

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9798888571262

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

The rescue excavation of Egyptian sites in advance of construction of the Assuan Dam contributed greatly to the understanding of the ancient Egyptian and Sudanese civilisations in the Nile valley. This book examines cultural relationships in the last centuries BC and first centuries AD centred on the ancient city of Meroe, which lies on the east bank of the Nile between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts. It was one of two principal cities, and the centre of political and religious power, of a civilisation that flourished between the 8th century BC and 4th century AD, extending over the area of northern Sudan.

RRP: £39.95

British Pottery: The First 3000 Years Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9798888570715

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 70 B/W illustrations

Description:

Pottery was at the heart of the ‘Neolithic package’ appearing in Britain with the first farmers around 4000 BC. It arrived as a mature technology and was essential to the new, largely sedentary, lifestyle and economy. It transformed storage and cooking practices, and the earliest ceramics seem to have been essential equipment in the new practice of dairying.

RRP: £39.95

Canon and Proportion in Egyptian Art Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 134

ISBN: 9798888571224

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

This facsimile reissue of the 1975 second edition of Iversen’s Canon and Proportion brings back into print a seminal work originally published in 1955. Iversen describes a canon – that is, a set of rules of proportions – advanced and used by the artists of Egypt. In order to interpret the stylistic message of the Egyptian system of proportion he undertakes a study of the principles of its construction, an analysis of its modules and presents an unambiguous numerical definition of the ratios governing its units and parts, demonstrating its use with illustrated examples.

RRP: £34.99

Format: Hardback

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9798888571149

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)

Illustrations: 100 B/W illustrations

Description:

Forsaken Relics examines the intricate mechanisms of ritualistic appropriation of ruined and/or abandoned assets and artifacts. It explores how this process occurs in situations where there is legislation to regulate the appropriation of ownerless property, as well as in cases where such rules are either absent or contested, leading to disputes and conflicts.Every society has developed its unique ways of managing the re-appropriation of ‘ownerless things’, such as places and houses abandoned after conflicts, crises, or natural disasters, forsaken cemeteries, tombs, and forgotten goods.

RRP: £50.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9798888571514

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 15 B/W illustrations and 20 colour illustrations

Description:

Water may separate islands and the mainland, but the sea also offers a vital link. This volume is one of three major outputs of the research and public engagement project ‘Being an Islander’: Art and Identity of the Large Mediterranean Islands, implemented between 2019 and 2024 at the University of Cambridge. This project aimed to elucidate what defines island identity in the Mediterranean.

RRP: £38.00

The Egyptian Administration in the Old Kingdom Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 172

ISBN: 9798888571668

Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

A generally held belief is that there was a downward trend in the authority and power of the king and a corresponding increase in the influence of officials over the course of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. This could be seen reflected in the increasing size, complexity and lavishness of their tombs, the cost of which was generally met by the official himself. If the tomb owner died before completing his tomb, it was either finished by his son, or a close relative, or left in an unfinished state.

RRP: £39.95

Format: Paperback

Pages: 134

ISBN: 9798888571200

Pub Date: 10 Oct 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

Description:

This facsimile reissue of Anthea Page’s catalog of the stone and wooden statuary in the Petrie Museum makes available again a major corpus of material. The bulk of statuary in the museum was purchased since the finest sculpture from Petrie’s own excavations rightly went to Cairo and other museums. While the sculpture in his own collection covers the whole length of Egyptian dynastic history illustrating many different schools and qualities of workmanship, it does not provide a comprehensive view of the art of the Egyptian sculptor.

RRP: £34.99

Format: Hardback

Pages: 336

ISBN: 9781789259759

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Explorations in Western Desert Rock

Description:

Rock art in Dakhleh was produced for perhaps as long as 10 millennia, resulting in the formation of hundreds of sites displaying thousands of images. In some places, petroglyphs form a true melting pot of iconographic creations, elsewhere only isolated depictions appear on rock surfaces. Various rock art traditions, from prehistoric, through pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, and mediaeval, have all added to a tremendous variety of petroglyphs, their formal traits and subject matter.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 200

ISBN: 9798888570678

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 200 b/w and color images

Description:

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 stands out as one of the most important finds of modern archaeology, revealing an enormous wealth of objects encapsulating techniques, vestiges of uses and re-uses of materials, as well as unrivalled clues regarding the complex set of beliefs associated with the pharaonic funerary material culture. Once cleared from the tomb, these objects have captivated the world with their irresistible charm and beauty ending up playing a role in contemporary popular culture. However, it seems that such magnetism rather hindered than facilitated the scholarly study of the find.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 344

ISBN: 9798888571347

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 400 color and B/W illustrations

Description:

Northwold Manor is a multi-period listed building (grade II*), about which almost nothing was known. Uninhabited since 1955, it had fallen into a state of extreme dereliction, and was beyond economic repair when the author purchased the property in 2014. He and his wife, Diane Gibbs, embarked on a major restoration that ran for nine years. The restoration was carried out as a quasi-archaeological operation, revealing that the building complex had Tudor origins, followed by the construction of a Stuart house, with Georgian improvements, and a new entertaining suite added in 1814. The Manor, with its fine drawing room, ballroom and orangery, was the grandest house in Northwold, and research into the families that occupied it revealed unexpected connections to the French Bourbon Court. From the 17th to the 20th century, the Carters were the principal owners, and a local branch of the family included Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamen’s tomb.This account begins with a topographical study of Northwold and its three medieval manors, followed by an exploration of the decline of the Carter family in the late 19th century. That triggered the break-up of the Northwold Estate in 1919. Passing through several ownerships, the Manor was earmarked for demolition in 1961; reprieved, it became a furniture store in the 1970s, and every room was solidly packed. As the roofs failed and water poured in, ceilings and floors collapsed, carrying with them the stacks of rotting furniture. By the late 1990s, walls and gables were collapsing too, and the local authority attempted to intervene. A long struggle to save the Manor ensued, finally ending with compulsory purchase in 2013.Although manor houses occur in most English parishes, they have received surprisingly little archaeological study. Every year, hundreds are restored or altered, but rarely accompanied by detailed recording or scholarly research; and popular television programs reveal the shameful level of destruction that takes place in the name of ‘restoration’. This is a book like no other: the holistic approach to the rehabilitation of Northwold’s derelict manor house – involving history, archaeology, architecture and genealogy – demonstrates how much can be learned about a building that had never before been studied. The project has received several awards.

RRP: £55.00

Bronze Age Rock Art in Iberia and Scandinavia Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 152

ISBN: 9798888571040

Pub Date: 10 Jun 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Swedish Rock Art Research

Illustrations: 60 B/W and color illustrations

Description:

Recent research has uncovered new evidence of long-distance interactions between Scandinavia and Iberia during the Late Bronze Age. Advances in various lines of inquiry, such as 3D recording of rock art, iconography, metals and amber sourcing, linguistics, and, to some extent, more indirect indications from human remains, as reflected by strontium and aDNA results, have made this possible. The main goal of this book is to cross reference Iberian Late Bronze Age warrior iconography with Scandinavian warrior iconography.