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.

Oceans Odyssey 2 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 354
ISBN: 9781842174425
Pub Date: 03 Jun 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: colour and black and white illustrations throughout
Description:
Oceans Odyssey 2 presents the results of the discovery and archaeological survey of ten deep-water wrecks by Odyssey Marine Exploration. In the Western Approaches and western English Channel, a mid-17th century armed merchantman, the guns of Admiral Balchin's Victory (1744), the mid-18th century French privateer La Marquise de Tourny and six German U-boats lost at the end of World War II are examined in depth. From the Atlantic coast of the United States, the Jacksonville 'Blue China' wreck's British ceramics, tobacco pipes and American glass wares bring to life the story of a remarkable East Coast schooner lost in the mid-19th century.
RRP: £25.00
Sailing to Classical Greece Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 120
ISBN: 9781842174227
Pub Date: 17 May 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
This volume of 15 papers is a tribute to Petros Themelis for his significant contribution to Greek archaeology and especially to the excavation, study and conservation to the ancient site of Messene in the Peloponnese. An international cast of scholars has contributed essays on a wide range of subjects (Greek sculpture, epigraphy and architecture), which reflect the interests of the honorand. New, previously unpublished material from Messenia, Athens and elsewhere is here presented for the first time.
RRP: £32.00
Exotica in the Prehistoric Mediterranean Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781842174241
Pub Date: 15 May 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 8 pages of colour illustrations, b/w illustrations
Description:
This book examines how exotic materials were exchanged and used across the Mediterranean from the Neolithic era to the Iron Age, focusing on the Bronze Age. A variety of materials and interpretative approaches are presented through several case studies. These emphasise how the value of exotic materials depended on the context in which they were consumed.
Old Kingdom, New Perspectives Cover Old Kingdom, New Perspectives Cover
Format: 
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9781842174302
Pub Date: 15 May 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w & col illus
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781789258813
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Recent research on all aspects of the Old Kingdom in Egypt is presented in this volume, ranging through the Pyramid Texts, tomb architecture, ceramics, scene choice and layout, field reports, cemetery layout, tomb and temple statuary. The contributions also show how Egyptology is not stuck in its venerable traditions but that newer forms of technology are being used to great effect by Egyptologists. For example, two papers show how GIS technology can shed light on cemetery arrangement and how 3D scanners can be employed in the process of producing facsimile drawings of reliefs and inscriptions.
RRP: £38.00
Pompeii Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781842179840
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 99 illus
Description:
Even after more than 250 years since its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure. The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture.
Well Built Mycenae, Fasc 16/17 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 102
ISBN: 9781842179963
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Well Built Mycenae
Illustrations: DVD
Description:
The post-palatial period - Late Helladic IIIC - is often seen as the twilight years of Mycenean civilisation, a period of economic decline with few achievements in terms of architecture, materials or technology. Excavation in the Citadel House area at Mycenae afforded unique opportunities to explore stratified remains of this period and to define and describe its character. In this fascicule, Dr.
TRAC 2010 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781842174524
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: TRAC
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
This volume contains ten papers reflecting current aspects of the debate in theoretical Roman archaeology. They include papers on what the pottery finds from the Nepi Survey Project can tell us about how the local landscape was used and inhabited, poliadic deities in Roman colonies in Italy, Pompeii, the practice of the recycling of architectural materials and personal adornment concerning textile remains and brooches.
RRP: £36.00
Late Quaternary Landscape Evolution of the Swale-Ure Washlands, North Yorkshire Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781842173749
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 16 pages of col illus, CD
Description:
Reporting on a multi-disciplinary project this book seeks to reconstruct the history since the last glaciation of the area between and including the middle reaches of the Rivers Swale and Ure in Yorkshire. Included in this history are both natural changes, determined from studies of landforms and sediments, and human-induced changes, recorded in archaeological and geo-archaeological records. The work is set in the context of previous research and pre-existing knowledge, outlined in an introductory chapter.
Ethnozooarchaeology Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781842179970
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
This book examines how the study of human-animal relations can help us interpret archaeological evidence. An international range of contributors examines fishing, hunting and husbandry, slaughtering and butchering, ceremonial and ritual practices and techniques of deposition and disposal in traditional societies. Topics covered include the theoretical potential of ethnographic research for zooarchaeology, the use of comparative analogies in the ethnographic and zooarchaeological records, the historical developments of ethnozooarchaeology and specific case studies selected from across the world.
RRP: £48.00
Current Research in Egyptology 11 (2010) Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781842174296
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Current Research in Egyptology
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
After having been held in the UK for the past 10 years, the 11th edition of the annual Current Research in Egyptology (CRE) graduate conference was held at Leiden University, The Netherlands in January 2010. As always, the main aim of the conference was to provide graduate and postgraduate students of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology with the opportunity to present their research. The proceedings of this year's conference cover a wide range of topics from the Predynastic Period to modern Egypt.
Becoming Neanderthals Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9781842179734
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 124 illus
Description:
It is now widely accepted that by the later Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals possessed a wide range of social and practical skills. More recently, researchers have become interested in how these skills actually emerged; in effect, the challenge now is to document the process by which Middle Pleistocene hominids "became Neanderthals". This book explores the development of classically Neanderthal behaviours in Europe between MIS 9-6, focusing on the British record, especially stone tools as durable residues of human action.
Culture, Chronology and the Chalcolithic Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781842179932
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Levant Supplementary Series
Illustrations: 87 b/w & col illus
Description:
To some, the Chalcolithic (4700/4500-3700/3600 BC cal.), as the first period with metallurgy, large sprawling villages, rich mortuary offerings, and cult centres, represents a developmental stage on the road to the urban Bronze Age, the "dawn of history". Others have called it 'the end of prehistory'.
RRP: £40.00
Living Through the Dead Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781842173763
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 79 b/w illustrations and maps
Description:
This volume investigates the archaeology of death and commemoration through thematically linked case studies drawn from the Classical world. These investigations stress the processes of burial and commemoration as inherently social and designed for an audience, and they explore the meaning and importance attached to preserving memory. While previous investigations of Greek and Roman death and burial have tended to concentrate on period- or regionally-specific sets of data, this volume instead focuses on a series of topical connections that highlight important facets of death and commemoration significant to the larger Classical world.
Comparative Archaeologies Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781935488262
Pub Date: 28 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Comparative Archaeologies scrutinises current thinking on the dynamics and historical trajectories of complex societies in the American Southwest (AD 900-1600) and the Iberian Peninsula (3000-1500 BC) through a focused comparison of five themes: Histories, Landscapes, Bodies, Gender, and Art. Leading archaeologists from North America and Europe - drawing on diverse intellectual traditions - engage in this innovative form of comparative archaeology which recognizes both the historicities of past societies of similar forms and the social embeddedness of archaeological practice and theory.
RRP: £45.00
Wellington Quarry, Herefordshire (1986-96) Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781842173664
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 57 tabs, 79 b/w & col illus
Description:
This volume presents the results of the first 10 years of archaeological investigation at Wellington Quarry, Herefordshire. During this time a regionally unique archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sequence was recorded covering nearly 8000 years of interrelated human activity and landscape change in the Lower Lugg Valley. Starting with use by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the heavily wooded floodplain witnessed periods of sporadic occupation and activity throughout early prehistory.
RRP: £30.00
Stone Axe Studies III Cover Stone Axe Studies III Cover
Format: 
Pages: 448
ISBN: 9781842174210
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2011
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: col and b/w illus
Pages: 448
ISBN: 9781789258080
Pub Date: 15 May 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
This volume builds upon the model of the first Stone Axe Studies volume published in 1979. It explores how scholars from various parts of the world currently approach these distinctive items. Some papers are united by specific material, such as those working on Jadeite axe blades in western and Central Europe.
RRP: £29.50