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.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 128

ISBN: 9781842174579

Pub Date: 30 Nov 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

How does "heritage" become objectified within public institutions and representative of a national past? This book proposes a model for this process and contains five case studies that explore variety in the transformation of heritage. The model proposes that heritage is transformed from concept to object and the agency of change is "management".

RRP: £40.00

Pilgrimage in Early Christian Jordan Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 264

ISBN: 9780977409495

Pub Date: 30 Nov 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

An interest in places of pilgrimage is very much a part of the life of many people in the modern world. For Christians, it is the Holy Land that holds specific interest - the area where the events described in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testament, are located. This volume focuses on early Christian pilgrimage in Jordan, the region east of the Jordan River which has so far been little explored by pilgrims and tourists to the Holy Land.

RRP: £26.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 180

ISBN: 9781842174357

Pub Date: 30 Nov 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 148 b/w & colour illus, 27 tables

Description:

The Roman Empire depended on the power of its armies to defend and extend the imperial borders, enabling it to dominate much of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Success was, in large part, founded on well-trained, well-disciplined soldiers who were equipped with the most advanced arms and armour available at that time. This is the story of the production of that armour.

RRP: £25.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 264

ISBN: 9781842179925

Pub Date: 04 Oct 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: UBC Studies in the Ancient World

Illustrations: 137 b/w & 9 colour illus

Description:

Adorning the north-west staircase in the British Museum is a group of brightly coloured figured mosaic pavements. Most were excavated for the Museum between 1856 and 1859 at Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, by a dilettante called Nathan Davis; the work was funded by the Foreign Office of the British Government. This book recounts for the first time the extraordinary story behind this pioneering enterprise and the political and cultural rivalry between representatives of the colonial powers as they asserted their rights to explore the buried remains of one of the ancient world's greatest cities.

Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9781842179994

Pub Date: 04 Oct 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Dynamics of Neolithisation examines the development of early agriculture in Neolithic Europe, drawing on the work of the late Professor Andrew Sherratt. His untimely death coincided with an important period of research that moved beyond searching for singular causal mechanisms behind the "neolithisation" of Europe in favour of developing a better understanding of the complex interrelationships of cultural, ecological, economic and social factors. Andrew Sherratt's work is significant because it developed models for integrating the different evidential components and analytical scales involved in the prehistoric development of European agriculture.

The Death of Archaeological Theory? Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 96

ISBN: 9781842174463

Pub Date: 15 Sep 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Oxbow Insights in Archaeology

Illustrations: 9 b/w illus

Description:

The Death of Archaeological Theory? addresses the provocative subject of whether it is time to discount the burden of somewhat dogmatic theory and ideology that has defined archaeological debate and shaped archaeology over the last 25 years. Seven chapters meet this controversial subject head on, also assessing where archaeological theory is now, and future directions.

RRP: £12.95

Format: Hardback

Pages: 374

ISBN: 9781842179802

Pub Date: 08 Sep 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Butrint Archaeological Monographs

Illustrations: c.425 b/w and 60 col illus

Description:

This engaging and well-illustrated volume describes the excavations of a large urban sector, the so-called Triconch Palace, of the Adriatic seaport of Butrint. In so doing it adds to the new paradigm for the development of Roman towns in the Mediterranean. The book traces the changing nature of this rich and varied area - from 2nd-century Roman townhouses, to a 4th-century elite domus, to a Mid Byzantine trading area to late medieval allotments - and reveals the rhythms of Butrint and its Mediterranean connections.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9781842174289

Pub Date: 30 Aug 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Ancient Textiles

Illustrations: 60 b/w & colour illus

Description:

War and Worship concerns textile deposits from the bog sites of Thorsberg in Germany and Nydam, Vimose and Illerup Ådal in Denmark. All four sites are well-known for containing a substantial amount of archaeological materials, particularly weapons, but they also contain, as integral parts of the weapon deposits, a smaller number of preserved textiles, which nevertheless constitute outstanding assemblages. With the exception of Thorsberg, publications dealing particularly with textiles from weapon deposits are almost non-existent.

Flint and Stone in the Neolithic Period Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 328

ISBN: 9781842174203

Pub Date: 30 Aug 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

Lithic artefacts were an intrinsic part of Neolithic life both in terms of everyday practical use and in ritual/symbolic mode. Archaeologists and prehistorians studying the Neolithic period recognise this, and accordingly, strive to maximise relevant data recovery and subsequently exploit the available data to the full. Fulfilling these ambitions requires specialist input, which not only comes from lithic analysts themselves, but also draws on a wide range of expertise from across archaeology and other disciplines and practices.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

ISBN: 9781842179857

Pub Date: 30 Aug 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner examines how specific types of food were prepared and eaten during feasting rituals in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. Such rituals allowed people to build and maintain their power and prestige and to maintain or contest the status quo. At the same time, they also contributed to the inner cohesion and sense of community of a group.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9781842174395

Pub Date: 26 Aug 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Levant Supplementary Series

Illustrations: 183 b/w illus

Description:

Umm al-Biyara, the highest mountain in Petra, southern Jordan, was the first Iron Age Edomite site to be extensively excavated. It was a domestic, unwalled site of stone-built longhouses dating to the 7th-6th centuries BCE. The stratigraphy, pottery, small finds and inscribed material, including the important bulla of Qos-Gabr, King of Edom are described, supplemented by chapters on the use of space and a landscape study of mountain-top sites in the Petra region.

RRP: £35.00

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 944

ISBN: 9781842173251

Pub Date: 02 Aug 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: col & b/w illus, foldouts, 2-part set

Description:

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, is a redundant medieval church in the care of English Heritage. As a result of a major programme of research carried out between 1978 and 2007, it is now the most intensively studied parish church in the UK. Excavations between 1978 and 1984 investigated most of the interior of the building, as well as a swathe of churchyard around its exterior.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 128

ISBN: 9781842174487

Pub Date: 15 Jul 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: ASTENE Publications

Illustrations: 23 col & b/w illus

Description:

For thousands of years travellers wandered to, and spread out through, Egypt and the Near East, seeking trade, adventure and knowledge. For centuries travellers to - and from - the Near East carried knowledge with them and then carried home the new knowledge acquired in the region. And knowledge, as the Arabic proverb states, is light.

RRP: £20.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 104

ISBN: 9781842174364

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w & col illus

Description:

The past decade has witnessed a remarkable momentum in the advancement of archaeomalacological research but there is still a lot of room for progress. These ten papers are the second published proceedings of the archaeomalacology sessions organised by ICAZ (Mexico City, 2006). The contributions revisit important archaeological issues such as provenance of raw materials, dye production and the secondary uses of industrial shell waste, the role of shell artefacts in the symbolic world of diverse civilisations, technology and early cross-regional exchange networks.

RRP: £32.00

Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 228

ISBN: 9781842179918

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 108 b/w & col illus

Description:

Recent archaeological work has shown that South Italy was densely occupied at least from the Late Bronze Age, with a marked process of the development of proto-urban centres, accompanied by important technological transformations. The archaeological exploration of indigenous South Italy is a relatively recent phenomenon, thanks to the bias towards the study of Greek colonies. Therefore an assessment of processes taking place in Italic Iron Age communities is well overdue.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 992

ISBN: 9781842174258

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2011

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: over 600 illus and 103 tables

Description:

Gathering Time presents the results of a major dating programme that re-writes the early Neolithic of Britain by more accurately dating enclosures, a phenomenon that first appeared in the early Neolithic: places of construction, labour, assembly, ritual and deposition. The project has combined hundreds of new radiocarbon dates with hundreds of existing dates, using a Bayesian statistical framework. Such formal chronological modelling is essential if significantly more precise and robust date estimates are to be achieved than those currently available from informal inspection of calibrated radiocarbon dates. The resulting dating project included over 35 enclosures - the largest study so far attempted in a Bayesian framework. This establishes a new chronology for causewayed and related enclosures in southern Britain, which appeared in the final decades of the 38th century cal BC, increased in number dramatically in the 37th century cal BC, and began no longer to be built by the end of the 36th century cal BC. Several enclosures were of short duration - in some cases probably in use for less than a generation - though some examples do conform to the conventional assumption of a long primary use-life. In Ireland, enclosures of this kind are much scarcer. The project helped to date two of these: Donegore, Co. Antrim and Magheraboy, Co. Sligo. As well as establishing a new chronology for enclosures, Gathering Time also places these results into their wider context, by considering the chronology of the early Neolithic as a whole. Well over a thousand other radiocarbon dates have been critically assessed and modelled in a Bayesian framework - for settlement, monument building and other activity, region by region across southern Britain and across Ireland as a whole (a brief comparative study of Scotland as far north as the Great Glen is also included). Generally in southern Britain other Neolithic activity can be dated before the beginnings of monument building and, among the monuments, long barrows, long cairns, and related forms clearly preceded the earliest causewayed enclosures. The first Neolithic things and practices probably appeared in south-east England in the 41st century cal BC, arguably by some kind of small-scale colonisation from the adjacent continent, and spread at a variable pace across the rest of Britain and Ireland over the next two and a half centuries or more, a process involving acculturation of local people as well as immigrants. Enclosures may have been adapted as a social strategy of harnessing the power of the distant and the exotic, and perhaps old ancestral ties to the European continent, in a dynamic and rapidly changing social milieu. Close attention is given to themes of deposition, material culture and different kinds of social interaction, from networks of exchange to episodes of violence. A high tempo of change continued, as very different constructions came to be built from the 36th century cal BC onwards: the linear and more arcane cursus monuments. The study of Irish Neolithic chronology reveals significant patterning, including a short currency for rectangular timber houses in the 37th century cal BC, but also highlights the challenge of establishing more reliable chronologies, for monuments in particular. Alternative scenarios for the date and nature of the beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland are modelled. Gathering Time ends with reflections on the nature and pace of change in prehistory. If generational timescales are now within our grasp routinely, more subtle and individualised kinds of (pre)history can and must be written, and the conventional frame of the long-term must shift from being familiar and comfortable to problematic.

RRP: £45.00