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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.

Clachtoll Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781789258479
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Clachtoll broch is one of the most spectacular Iron Age settlements on the northern mainland of Scotland. When it became clear that the structure was threatened by coastal erosion, community heritage group Historic Assynt launched a major programme of conservation and excavation works designed to secure the vulnerable structure and recover the archaeological evidence of its occupation and use. The resulting excavation provided evidence of a long and complex history of construction and rebuilding, with the final, middle Iron Age occupation phase ending in a catastrophic fire and collapse of the tower by the early years of the first century AD.
Highhays, Kilkenny Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 368
ISBN: 9781789258530
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: Full colour
Description:
This richly illustrated book presents the first comprehensive study of the making and marketing of pottery in medieval Ireland. Focusing on a well-preserved 14th-century pottery production centre which was excavated in 2006 at Highhays, outside the walls of the renowned Anglo-Norman town of Kilkenny in south-east Ireland, the authors describe its kiln, workshops and working areas, as well as its ‘Highhays Ware’ products: jugs, jars, cooking-pots, money-boxes and ridge tiles. Foremost amongst the outputs from the kiln site were high-quality, wheel-thrown, green-glazed jugs that were closely modelled on French Saintonge and Bristol Redcliffe archetypes and the volume describes the distinctive processes, kiln-firing technology and raw materials that were employed to produce these, and the other wares, represented on the site.
Ancient Arms Race: Antiquity's Largest Fortresses and Sasanian Military Networks of Northern Iran Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 928
ISBN: 9781789254624
Pub Date: 25 Jun 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: British Institute of Persian Studies Archaeological Monograph Series
Illustrations: colour
Description:
Which ancient army boasted the largest fortifications, and how did the competitive build-up of military capabilities shape world history? Few realise that imperial Rome had a serious competitor in Late Antiquity. Late Roman legionary bases, normally no larger than 5 ha, were dwarfed by Sasanian fortresses, often covering 40 ha, sometimes even 125–175 ha.
Journal of Roman Pottery Studies Volume 19 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781789258257
Pub Date: 15 Jun 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Journal of Roman Pottery Studies
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
The main focus of this volume is upon pottery production sites. The major contribution comprises ‘Excavations of Roman pottery kiln sites in Cantley Parish, South Yorkshire, 1956–1975’ by Paul Buckland and the late John Magilton. Other contributions publish the well-preserved kiln complex and products at Lavenham, Suffolk (Andrew Newton, Andrew Peachey, et al.
Exploring Ancient Textiles Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781789257250
Pub Date: 05 Jun 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Ancient Textiles
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Over the past 30 years, research on archaeological textiles has developed into an important field of scientific study. It has greatly benefitted from interdisciplinary approaches, which combine the application of advanced technological knowledge to ethnographic, textual and experimental investigations. In exploring textiles and textile processing (such as production and exchange) in ancient societies, archaeologists with different types and quality of data have shared their knowledge, thus contributing to well-established methodology.
Tell Ahmar on the Syrian Euphrates Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781789258387
Pub Date: 05 Jun 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Tell Ahmar – also known as Masuwari, Til Barsib and Kar-Shalmaneser in the first millennium BCE – was first inhabited in the sixth millennium during the Ubaid period, and progressively developed to become a regional centre, and in the eighth and seventh centuries, a provincial capital of the Assyrian empire. Remains from the third millennium (a temple and a funerary complex), the second millennium (an administrative complex and well-preserved houses) and the first millennium (an Assyrian palace and elite residences) are particularly impressive. The book offers an archaeological and historical synthesis of the results obtained by the excavations of François Thureau-Dangin (1929–1931) and by the more recent excavations of the universities of Melbourne (1988–1999) and Liège (2000–2010).
Seeking the First Farmers in Western Sjælland, Denmark Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781789257656
Pub Date: 28 May 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
This volume summarizes 30 years of fieldwork in Denmark, some of the evidence for the spread of agriculture and the Neolithic into Scandinavia and some opinions about the origins of agriculture. It is intended to be both academic and personal and to describe the actual process of research, because most projects involve elements of both. Each chapter will deal with one of the components of the project – survey, testing and excavations.
The Archaeology of Roman Macedonia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789258011
Pub Date: 15 May 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
Macedonia is a region that provides its own intriguing questions due to its position on the fringe of the classical Greek world. It is also an area that is of special interest to students of history and archaeology of Roman period Greece, since it was the first to be incorporated in the Roman state. Macedonia shared a similar path of development with Achaea during the imperial period.
The Archaeology of Roman Portugal in its Western Mediterranean Context Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789258325
Pub Date: 15 May 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The Archaeology of Roman Portugal contributes to the wider debate on Roman imperialism and expansionism, by bringing to the fore a much-underrepresented area of the Roman empire, at least in English-language scholarship: its westernmost edge in modern day Portugal. Highlighting the perspective from Roman Portugal contributes to our understanding of the Roman empire, through presenting both an extraordinary landscape in the sense of economic opportunities (ocean resources, marble and metal mining), and also settlement history. The volume presents new data and insights from both archaeology and ancient history, discussing their significance for our understanding of Roman expansion and imperialism.
Crossing Continents Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781789255546
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The first contacts between Greece, the Aegean and India are thought to have occurred at the beginning of the sixth century BC. There is now evidence of much earlier indirect connections, starting in the middle of the third millennium BC, but greatly diminishing after 1800 BC. These were initially between India with its Indus Civilisation (Meluḫḫa) and the Near East and then finally with the societies of the Early and Middle Bronze Age Aegean, with their slowly emerging palace-based economies and complex social structures.
Maritime Archaeology on Dry Land Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781789258196
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
This book is about two islands off the coast of Continental Europe, the seas that surrounded them, and the ways in which they were used over a period of three thousand years. Instead of the usual emphasis on finds in the intertidal zone, it focuses on parts of Britain and Ireland where traces of the prehistoric shoreline survive above sea level. It explores a series of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites which were investigated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and have been largely forgotten.
RRP: £35.00
Tracing Textile Production from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 264
ISBN: 9781789257779
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
This book concerns textile production at the fringes of north-western Europe – areas in western Norway and the North Atlantic in the expanding, dynamic and transformative period from the early Viking Age into the Middle Ages. Textiles constitute one of the basic needs in human life – to protect and keep the body warm but also to show social status and affiliations. Textiles had a wide spectrum of use areas and qualities, fine and coarse in various contexts, and in the Viking Age not least related to the production of sails – all essential for the development and character of the period.
RRP: £48.00
Values and Revaluations Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781789258134
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w
Description:
Why are some things valuable while others are not? How much effort does it take to produce valuable objects? How can one explain the different appraisal of certain things in different temporal horizons and in different cultures?
RRP: £38.00
Roman Religion in the Danubian Provinces Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781789257830
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
The Danubian provinces represent one of the largest macro-units within the Roman Empire, with a large and rich heritage of Roman material evidence. Although the notion itself is a modern 18th-century creation, this region represents a unique area, where the dominant, pre-Roman cultures (Celtic, Illyrian, Hellenistic, Thracian) are interconnected within the new administrative, economic and cultural units of Roman cities, provinces and extra-provincial networks. This book presents the material evidence of Roman religion in the Danubian provinces through a new, paradigmatic methodology, focusing not only on the traditional urban and provincial units of the Roman Empire, but on a new space taxonomy.
Rome and the Colonial City Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9781789257809
Pub Date: 15 Mar 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Impact of the Ancient City
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
According to one narrative that received almost canonical status a century ago with Francis Haverfield, the orthogonal grid was the most important development of ancient town planning, embodying values of civilisation in contrast to barbarism, diffused in particular by hundreds of Roman colonial foundations. Its main legacy to subsequent urban development was the model of the grid city, spread across the New World in new colonial cities. This book explores the shortcomings of that all too colonialist narrative and offers new perspectives.
RRP: £50.00
Dynamic Epigraphy Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9781789257892
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
This volume, with origins in a panel at the 2018 Celtic Conference in Classics, presents creative new approaches to epigraphic material, in an attempt to 'shake up' how we deal with inscriptions. Broad themes include the embodied experience of epigraphy, the unique capacities of epigraphic language as a genre, the visuality of inscriptions and the interplay of inscriptions with literary texts. Although each chapter focuses on specific objects and epigraphic landscapes, ranging from Republican Rome to early modern Scotland, the emphasis here is on using these case studies not as an end in themselves, but as a means of exploring broader methodological and theoretical issues to do with how we use inscriptions as evidence, both for the Greco-Roman world and for other time periods.
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