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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.

Arsacids, Romans and Local Elites Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781785705922
Pub Date: 21 Mar 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
For almost 500 years (247 BCE–224 CE), the Arsacid kings of Parthia ruled over a vast multi-cultural empire, which encompassed much of central Asia and the Near East. The inhabitants of this empire included a complex patchwork of Hellenized Greek-speaking elites, Iranian nobility, and semi-nomadic Asian tribesman, all of whom had their own competing cultural and economic interests. Ruling over such a diverse group of subjects required a strong military and careful diplomacy on the part of the Arsacids, who faced the added challenge of competing with the Roman empire for control of the Near East.
RRP: £36.00
Dress and Society Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781785703157
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
While traditional studies of dress and jewellery have tended to focus purely on reconstruction or descriptions of style, chronology and typology, the social context of costume is now a major research area in archaeology. This refocusing is largely a result of the close relationship between dress and three currently popular topics: identity, bodies and material culture. Not only does dress constitute an important means by which people integrate and segregate to form group identities, but interactions between objects and bodies, quintessentially illustrated by dress, can also form the basis of much wider symbolic systems.
RRP: £36.00
Archaeology of East Asia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9781785706677
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Archaeology of East Asia constitutes an introduction to social and political development from the Palaeolithic to 8th-century early historic times. It takes a regional view across China, Korea, Japan and their peripheries that is unbounded by modern state lines. This viewpoint emphasizes how the region drew on indigenous developments and exterior stimuli to produce agricultural technologies, craft production, political systems, religious outlooks and philosophies that characterize the civilization of historic and even modern East Asia.
RRP: £36.00
The Lost Dark Age Kingdom of Rheged Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781785703119
Pub Date: 27 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
Trusty's Hill is an early medieval fort at Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway. The hillfort comprises a fortified citadel defined by a vitrified rampart around its summit, with a number of enclosures looping out along lower-lying terraces and crags. The approach to its summit is flanked on one side by a circular rock-cut basin and on the other side by Pictish Symbols carved on to the face of a natural outcrop of bedrock.
Ancient Egyptian Furniture Volume I Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781785704819
Pub Date: 24 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Egyptian Furniture
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
This revised second edition examines the common forms of furniture used in ancient Egypt, so much of which has been preserved by the dry Egyptian climate and has long been admired for the quality of its design and construction. The story begins with the earliest known pieces and ends with the spectacular discoveries from the 18th dynasty represented mainly by the magnificent furniture from the tomb of Tutankhamun. The insight which Dr Killen brings in the detailed explanations of the materials, techniques and designs of the master craftsmen of ancient Egypt, gives this book a special significance.
RRP: £60.00
Ancient Egyptian Furniture Volume II Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 168
ISBN: 9781785704857
Pub Date: 24 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Egyptian Furniture
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
In this revised second edition Dr Killen continues his survey of Egyptian furniture-making techniques with a study of boxes, chests and footstools and traces their evolution from the earliest times. Wooden, papyrus and alabaster boxes and chests were used to hold, protect and store valuable objects, toilet utensils, instruments, tools, garments, curtains, game pieces and papyri amongst other things. Those from the Old Kingdom usually had flat lids and solid board sides, tied together at the corners.
RRP: £60.00
Ancient Egyptian Furniture Volume III Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781785704895
Pub Date: 24 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Egyptian Furniture
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
In this third volume Dr Killen investigates how woodworking in ancient Egypt developed in the 19th and 20th dynasties. It establishes the range of wooden furniture manufactured during this period by surveying examples depicted in Ramesside Theban and Memphite tombs. Ancient records show how the procurement of furniture occurred at Deir el-Medina while the design and manufacturing of these furniture forms can be traced through a series of furniture sketches that are annotated with a range of marks and signs.
RRP: £60.00
Archaeozoology of the Near East 9 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9781782978442
Pub Date: 17 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
This two part volume brings together over 60 specialists to present 31 papers on the latest research into archaeozoology of the Near East. The papers are wide-ranging in terms of period and geographical coverage: from Palaeolithic rock shelter assemblages in Syria to Byzantine remains in Palestine and from the Caucasus to Cyprus. Papers are grouped into thematic sections examining patterns of Palaeolithic and Neolithic subsistence in northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Iranian plateau; Palaeolithic to Neolithic faunal remains from Armenia; animal exploitation in Bronze Age urban sites; new evidence concerning pastoralism, nomadism and mobility; aspects of domestication and animal exploitation in the Arabian peninsula; several case studies on ritual animal deposits; and specific analyses of patterns of animal exploitation at urban sites in Turkey, Palestine and Jordan.
RRP: £70.00
Westward on the High-Hilled Plains Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781785704116
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: The Making of the West Midlands
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The West Midlands has struggled archaeologically to project a distinct regional identity, having largely been defined by reference to other areas with a stronger cultural identity and history, such as Wessex the South-West, and the North. Only occasionally has the West Midlands come to prominence, for instance in the middle Saxon period (viz. the kingdom of Mercia), or, much later, with rural south Shropshire being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

Ancient Egyptian Furniture Volumes I-III
Format: Hardback
Pages: 472
ISBN: 9781785704932
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Egyptian Furniture
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Geoffrey Killen presents three volumes that discuss the forms and uses of furniture in ancient Egypt. The first two volumes are updated editions which examine the materials, tools and common forms of furniture used in ancient Egypt. The third volume is a new work that concentrates on the types of furniture used by the ruling, priestly and artisan classes during the Ramesside Period.
Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9781785703591
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Studies in Funerary Archaeology
Description:
Life and Death in Asia Minor combines contributions in both archaeology and bioarchaeology in Asia Minor in the period ca. 200 BC – AD 1300 for the first time. The archaeology topics are wide-ranging including death and territory, death and landscape perception, death and urban transformations from pagan to Christian topography, changing tomb typologies, funerary costs, family organization, funerary rights, rituals and practices among pagans, Jews, and Christians, inhumation and Early Byzantine cremations and use and reuse of tombs.
RRP: £65.00
Life and Death in the Mesolithic of Sweden Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781785703850
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
Over the last 20 years a vast number of new and important Swedish Mesolithic sites have been excavated and published in different ways as articles, books and site reports. As yet there has been no study that tries to bring the loose ends together and so the main task of this important new work by one of Sweden’s leading prehistorians is to provide an extensive overview of some of the main sites and results. The timespan is long: c.
RRP: £38.00
Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781785704970
Pub Date: 27 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: colour and b/w
Description:
The five authoritive papers presented here are the product of long careers of research into Anglo-Saxon culture. In detail the subject areas and approaches are very different, yet all are cross-disciplinary and the same texts and artefacts weave through several of them. Literary text is used to interpret both history and art; ecclesiastical-historical circumstances explain the adaptation of usage of a literary text; wealth and religious learning, combined with old and foreign artistic motifs are blended into the making of new books with multiple functions; religio-socio-economic circumstances are the background to changes in burial ritual.
RRP: £38.00
Forms of Dwelling Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781785703775
Pub Date: 13 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
The concept of a socially constructed space of human activity in areas of everyday actions, as initially proposed in the field of anthropology by Tim Ingold, has actually been much more applied in archaeology. In this wide-ranging collection of 13 papers, including a re-assessment by Ingold himself, contributors show why it has been so influential, with papers ranging from the study of Mesolithic to historic and contemporary archaeology, revisiting different research themes, such as Ingold’s own Lapland study, and the development of landscape archaeology. A series of case studies demonstrates the value and strength of the taskscape concept applied to a variety of contexts and scales across wide geographical and temporal situations.
RRP: £38.00
Silk Cover Silk Cover
Format: 
Hardback Paperback
Pages: 152
ISBN: 9781785702792
Pub Date: 12 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Illustrations: bw and colour
Pages: 152
ISBN: 9781789255515
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Description:
Already in Greek and Roman antiquity a vibrant series of exchange relationships existed between the Mediterranean regions and China, including the Indian subcontinent, along well-defined routes we call the Silk Roads. Among the many goods that found their way from East to West and vice versa were glass, wine spices, metals and precious stones as well as textile raw materials and fabrics of wool and silk, a precious fibre that was highly appreciated in many of the cultures along the roads that were named after it by modern scholars. These collected papers bring together current historical, philological and archaeological research from different areas and disciplines in order highlight the use, circulation and meaning of silk as a commodity, gift, tribute , booty, and status symbol in varying cultural and chronological contexts between East and West, including technological aspects of silk production.
RRP: £29.95
A Geography of Offerings Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781785704772
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Insights in Archaeology
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
More than quarter of a century ago Richard Bradley published The Passage of Arms. It was conceived as An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits, but, as the author concedes, these terms were too narrowly focused for the complex subject of deliberate deposition and the period covered too short. A Geography of Offerings has been written to provoke a reaction from archaeologists and has two main aims.
RRP: £15.99
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