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.

Credit and Debt in Medieval England c.1180-c.1350 Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 200

ISBN: 9781842170731

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 18 b/w figs, 17 tbs

Description:

The essays in this volume look at the mechanics of debt, the legal process, and its economics in early medieval England. Beneath the elevated plane of high politics, affairs of the Crown and international finance of the Middle Ages, lurked huge numbers of credit and debt transactions. The transactions and those who conducted them moved between social and economic worlds; merchants and traders, clerics and Jews, extending and receiving credit to and from their social superiors, equals and inferiors.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

ISBN: 9781842172278

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

This volume focuses on the ways in which the production and consumption of food developed in the Aegean region in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, to see how this was linked to the appearance of more complex forms of social organisation. Sites from Macedonia in the north of Greece down to Crete are discussed and chronologically the papers cover not only the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age but extend into the Middle and Late Bronze Age and Classical period as well. The evidence from human remains, animal and fish bones, cultivated and wild plants, hearths and ovens, ceramics and literary texts is interpreted through a range of techniques, such as residue and stable isotope analysis.

The Ancient Red Sea Port of Adulis, Eritrea Report of the Etritro-British Expedition, 2004-5 Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 145

ISBN: 9781842173084

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w illus

Description:

The port of Adulis was one of greatest significance in Antiquity. It is best known for its role in Aksumite trade during the fourth - seventh centuries AD. However it is also a major port of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea , a sailors' hand-book of the first century AD.

Aspects of Industry in Roman Yorkshire and the North Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9781842170786

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 69 b/w figs, 3 tbs

Description:

At the frontiers of the Roman Empire, military settlements had a profound influence on local crafting traditions. Legions were not just fighting units - they contained a large number of craftsmen, and the fortress would have been a centre of manufacturing activity. A timber legionary fortress, for example, required vast numbers of nails, many of which would have been made by legionary smiths on site, and an army of thousands would require many more pots, shoes and tents than could be produced by local domestic potters and leather workers.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 260

ISBN: 9781785701993

Pub Date: 31 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Modern borders of all kinds, political, geographical and social, effect the kinds of prehistoric narratives archaeologists can write. Borders that dominate today did not exist in prehistory. This volume works across such borders and focuses specifically on the region between the Rivers Forth and Tyne, an area divided by the modern political border between Scotland and England.

RRP: £45.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 816

ISBN: 9781785700262

Pub Date: 31 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: black/white & colour illustrations

Description:

Between 1975 and 1984 almost the entire area of the Roman fort of Segedunum in Wallsend was excavated under the direction of Charles Daniels, senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Newcastle University. It is these excavations which form the subject of this publication. This comprehensive report on the structural remains (Vol. 1) and finds (Vol. 2) show clearly that Daniels’ work represented one of the most ambitious and prolonged programmes of fieldwork attempted on the northern frontier up to that point and has made Wallsend one of the most fully investigated of Roman forts in Britain. In most areas the remains were not excavated down to natural and so the remains revealed were predominantly those of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, with some late Roman features. Volume 1 describes first the stratigraphic sequences and excavation of the stone and timber buildings of the fort’s central range: the granary, hospital, headquarters (principia), commanding officer’s house (praetorium), the forehall fronting the principia and granary, and a long narrow building, perhaps a workshop, on the north side of the eastern via principalis. In the case of all but the praetorium these buildings were fully exposed. Later chapters cover the buildings in the northern third of the fort, revealed to be a group of six infantry barracks which underwent several phases of rebuilding and refurbishment including partial replacment by a stable block. Parts 4 and 5 examine the cavalry barracks in the southern part of the fort (retentura) and excavations of sections of the fort defences on all four sides, particularly of discrete structures such as towers and gates.Volume 2, on the predominantly 2nd–3rd century material culture from the site, looks at the stonework, pottery, coins and small finds recovered. The stonework and ceramic building material provides information on the appearance of the fort and include a very rare stone latrine seat and a bench support. The pottery comprises samian, mortaria, including a large collection stamped by Anaus, amphorae and coarse wares. Other clases of artefact occur in comparatively small numbers, including colourless glass tablewares of the second and third centuries, 295 coins and c. 1000 small finds including some post-Roman pieces. Finally there is a detialed assessment of animal bone assemblages from a cistern and the Commanding Officer’s house.

Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom Cover

Format:

Hardback Paperback

Pages: 300

ISBN: 9781785701603

Pub Date: 31 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Ancient Textiles

Pages: 360

ISBN: 9781789259865

Pub Date: 31 Jan 2023

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Ancient Textiles

Description:

Textile imagery is pervasive in classical literature. An awareness of the craft and technology of weaving and spinning, of the production and consumption of clothing items, and of the social and religious significance of garments is key to the appreciation of how textile and cloth metaphors work as literary devices, their suitability to conceptualise human activities and represent cosmic realities, and their potential to evoke symbolic associations and generic expectations. Spanning mainly Greek and Latin poetic genres, yet encompassing comparative evidence from other Indo-European languages and literatures, these 18 chapters draw a various yet consistent picture of the literary exploitation of the imagery, concepts and symbolism of ancient textiles and clothing.

The Use and Reuse of Stone Circles Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781785702433

Pub Date: 31 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

The study of stone circles has long played a major role in British and Irish archaeology, and for Scotland most attention has been focused on the large monuments of Orkney and the Western Isles. Several decades of fieldwork have shown how these major structures are likely to be of early date and recognised that that smaller settings of monoliths had a more extended history. Many of the structures in Northern Britain were reused during the later Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the early medieval period.

RRP: £39.95

Ancient Irrigation Systems of the Aral Sea Area Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 300

ISBN: 9781842173848

Pub Date: 24 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph

Description:

Ancient Irrigation Systems in the Aral Sea Area is the English translation of Boris Vasilevich Andrianov's work, Drevnie orositelnye sistemy priaralya, concerning the study of ancient irrigation systems and the settlement pattern in the historical region of Khorezm, south of the Aral Sea (Uzbekistan). This work holds a special place within the Soviet archaeological school because of the results obtained through a multidisciplinary approach combining aerial survey and fieldwork, surveys, and excavations. This translation has been enriched by the addition of introductions written by several eminent scholars from the region regarding the importance of the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition and the figure of Boris V.

RRP: £35.00

Fortified Settlements in Early Medieval Europe Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9781785702358

Pub Date: 17 Jul 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks.

RRP: £50.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 282

ISBN: 9781785702396

Pub Date: 30 Jun 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

Quests for cod, herring and other sea fish had profound impacts on medieval Europe. This interdisciplinary book combines history, archaeology and zooarchaeology to discover the chronology, causes and consequences of these fisheries. It crosscuts traditional temporal and geographical boundaries, ranging from the Migration Period through the Middle Ages into early modern times, and from Iceland to Estonia, Arctic Norway to Belgium.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781785702037

Pub Date: 13 Jun 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Beyond Thalassocracies aims to evaluate and rethink the manner in which archaeologists approach, understand, and analyse the various processes associated with culture change connected to interregional contact, using as a test case the world of the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1100 BC). The 14 chapters compare and contrast various aspects of the phenomena of Minoanisation and Mycenaeanisation, both of which share the basic underlying defining feature of material culture change in communities around the Aegean.

RRP: £45.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

ISBN: 9781785702310

Pub Date: 13 Jun 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology

Description:

Of Odysseys and Oddities is about scales and modes of interaction in prehistory, specifically between societies on both sides of the Aegean and with their nearest neighbours overland to the north and east. The 17 contributions reflect on tensions at the core of how we consider interaction in archaeology, particularly the motivations and mechanisms leading to social and material encounters or displacements. Linked to this are the ways we conceptualise spatial and social entities in past societies (scales) and how we learn about who was actively engaged in interaction and how and why they were (modes).

RRP: £38.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9781785702112

Pub Date: 13 Jun 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Ancient Textiles

Description:

Persian blue, pomegranate flower, spiny lobster, wine soup, pale flesh, dove breast, golden wax, grass green, green sand, rotten olive, modest plum, agate, rich French gray, gunpowder of the English..

Dakhleh Oasis and the Western Desert of Egypt under the Ptolemies Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 504

ISBN: 9781785701351

Pub Date: 12 Jun 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Dakhleh Oasis Project Monographs

Description:

Through an analysis of recently discovered Ptolemaic pottery from Mut al-Kharab, as well as a re-examination of pottery collected by the Dakhleh Oasis Project during the survey of the oasis from 1978–1987, this book challenges the common perception that Dakhleh Oasis experienced a sudden increase in agricultural exploitation and a dramatic rise in population during the Roman Period. It argues that such changes had already begun to take place during the Ptolemaic Period, likely as the result of a deliberate strategy directed toward this region by the Ptolemies.This book focuses on the ceramic remains in order to determine the extent of Ptolemaic settlement in the oases and to offer new insights into the nature of this settlement.

RRP: £75.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9781785701726

Pub Date: 31 May 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Description:

Seventeen papers demonstrate how zooarchaeologists engage with questions of identity through culinary references, livestock husbandry practices and land use. Contributions combine hitherto unpublished zooarchaeological data from regions straddling a wide geographic expanse between Greece in the West and India in the East and spanning a time range from the latest part of the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. The vitality of a hands-on approach to data presentation and interpretation carried out primarily at the level of the individual site – the arena of research providing the bread and butter of zooarchaeological work conducted in southwest Asia – is demonstrated.

RRP: £38.00