Oxbow Books

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9798888571590

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 150 images, mostly colour

Description:

In 2025, the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society, incorporating the Shropshire Natural History Society and the Shropshire Parish Records Society, will publish the 100th volume of its Transactions. It has taken closer to 150 years than a century to achieve this feat, but it is nonetheless an important milestone for the society. In recognition of this, the Society is publishing these papers to reflect upon the rich and often underexplored historical and archaeological dimensions of the county with the twin aims of showcasing the research currently being carried out across Shropshire to a wider audience, and to alert other researchers of the huge potential that the county has to offer in the hope that they too could become involved in exploring its riches.

RRP: £45.00

From Farm to Viking-age Trading Centre Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 592

ISBN: 9798888571972

Pub Date: 15 Aug 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 300 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

The discovery of early medieval artefacts by metal detectorists at Glyn, Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey from the late 1980s led to a longterm programme of archaeological investigations by the National Museum of Wales (now Amgueddfa Cymru). Excavation revealed rich evidence for human activity from the Mesolithic period to the present, but its international recognition as a transformative site has been based on the remarkable early medieval evidence covering the 5th to 6thcentury transition up to the 11th century.The early medieval enclosed settlement has produced the richest archaeological record in preNorman Wales for this period of political and cultural transformation.

RRP: £60.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9798888572023

Pub Date: 20 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: max 195 inc some colour

Description:

Neolithic long barrows in Bohemia were long neglected by archaeologists due to their destruction by modern intensive agricultural activity. This new analysis, resulting from a threeyear interdisciplinary research project, of the phenomenon of Neolithic long barrows in Bohemia and Central Europe presents entirely new findings and data and tackles a number of previously unresolved questions. New discoveries, based primarily on remote sensing and targeted excavations, together with the revision of earlier archaeological records, allow us to define more accurately the construction and chronological development of these monuments, and to advance our knowledge of the southeastern boundary of this phenomenon's spread together with reconstruction of the social and religious significance of these monuments for the agricultural communities of Central Europe. At the sacred places defined by the long barrows, ceremonies and rituals took place over millennia that confirmed the cohesion of the living with the ancestors and their faith in the gods. People, even many generations later, continued to venerate these ancient monuments, not as places of final rest for their direct ancestors but as places dedicated to mythical time, where the living meet the dead and honour the gods. It is not surprising, therefore, that people added the burials of their own ancestors to the embankments of ancient barrows and established their own funerary areas nearby even after several millennia.All long barrows excavated within our project contained only one primary burial: in Bohemia these were not collective graves as found, for example, in the British Isles or Scandinavia. Given the monumentality of barrow construction, it can be presumed that the buried individuals represented a form of social elite, though not necessarily due to their individual social power. It seems that the primary burial played the role of an initiation sacrifice: a ritual of consecration of the ancestor sanctuary, which then no longer served for further burials that may have been taboo. Subsequent activities may have been related to forms of ancestral cult, but the primary burial was not followed by other funerary events. All evidence of later burials is at least 1000 years later than barrow construction.In the region around the Czech mythical Mountain Říp, burial monuments from various prehistoric periods, including the Late Neolithic, abound. Residential and economic activities on the plains appear later. It can be assumed that this area was perceived as a ritual landscape in earlier prehistory in which long barrows played a significant role in structuring the farming landscape and as significant landmarks. Their monumentality initiated a longstanding tradition creating palimpsests of funerary and sacred sites near Mount Říp. The places where the long barrows were built played an important role in the lives of prehistoric communities, and their placement and orientation in the landscape was not random, indicating significant symbolic connotations with the surrounding landscape. The rituals and festivities held here allowed people to connect with the spiritual legacy of their ancestors, thus creating a significant spiritual tradition inscribed in the agriculturally colonised landscape.

RRP: £42.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 192

ISBN: 9798888571323

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Butrint Archaeological Monographs

Illustrations: 100 B/W and color illustrations

Description:

Butrint 8 is largely devoted to the Middle Byzantine archaeology discovered by the Butrint Foundation’s projects at Butrint itself, in its environs, and in the nearby port of Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. The volume includes a full report on the excavations in Butrint’s western defenses, built in the 6th century as a proteichisma, and maintained in use until the 9th century when tower 1 partly perished in a fire and tower 2 was abandoned. From these 9th-century levels came a major assemblage of traded and local ceramics as well as glass cullet.

RRP: £50.00

Cladh Hallan: Roundhouses and the Dead in the Hebridean Bronze Age and Iron Age Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 464

ISBN: 9798888571163

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides

Illustrations: 200 B/W and color illustrations

Description:

This second of two volumes presents archaeological and scientific studies of a wide range of materials from the unusually long-occupied Bronze Age and Iron Age site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. These include metalworking debris, copper-alloy, gold and iron artifacts, bone and antler tools and ornaments, flint and quartz tools, coarse stone tools, pumice, shale ornaments and fuel ash slag. The metalworking assemblage, from casting weapons, tools and ornaments, is exceptional in its size and in its being stratified within a domestic context of production.

RRP: £39.95

Format: Hardback

Pages: 432

ISBN: 9781789259773

Pub Date: 15 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 210 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

This book explores the distinctive landscape and society of South-West England that had emerged by the Iron Age and which continued to develop during the Roman and medieval periods. A focus of the research was the long-term programme of survey and excavation on the Iron Age, Roman, and early medieval settlement at Dainton Elms Cross, in Ipplepen (Devon), which included the only Roman roadside settlement to have seen extensive excavation to the south and west of Exeter on the very edge of the Roman empire, as well as a substantial early medieval cemetery. First discovered through the reporting of an unusual concentration of Roman finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the site was investigated through a joint university and community project led by the University of Exeter in partnership with the British Museum/PAS, Devon County Council, and Cotswold Archaeology.

RRP: £50.00

Early Insular Art at the Crossroads Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 304

ISBN: 9798888571064

Pub Date: 01 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 120 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects.

RRP: £42.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

ISBN: 9798888571088

Pub Date: 01 Jun 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 90 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects.

RRP: £40.00

From Coast to Fen: Archaeology in a Dynamic Landscape Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 208

ISBN: 9798888571958

Pub Date: 16 May 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 100 b/w and colour illustrations

Description:

Excavation of over 15 sites located from Anderby Creek on the East Lincolnshire Coast to Bicker Fen in the Borough of Boston has revealed hints of prehistoric activity, evidence of Iron and Roman settlement and salt-making, and insights into post-medieval rural industry. The sites lie within a landscape that has witnessed significant and complex change with periods of marine transgression, regression and later reclamation. The impacts of this can be seen in the distribution of sites and the activities taking place. The excavations have provided the opportunity to explore the role of landscape in shaping human activity through time.The excavations revealed limited evidence of prehistoric activity with the development of marshlands and intertidal mud flats during the Bronze Age. A timber structure was uncovered comprised of two parallel timbers supported by stakes. Dendrochronological analysis indicated timbers were felled during the middle Bronze Age. The structure provides evidence of early efforts to move and live in this constantly changing landscape. The Iron Age witnessed the beginning of enclosures and activities, such as salt production, which would expand in the Roman period.Evidence of Roman settlement and salt-making was uncovered throughout the area with salt-making concentrated to the north, closer to the coastline. Four saltern sites were excavated with large deposits of briquetage and salt production features, such as tanks and kilns, providing evidence of all stages of salt production and the ceramic assemblages indicating contact with the wider Roman empire including samian and traded wares, from Argonne, Northern Gaul, and neighbouring counties seldom found on sites in Lincolnshire. The date of the salterns is a key discussion point with two sites potentially providing rare evidence of the continuation of activity into the late Roman period. Roman agricultural settlements, located on roddons further inland comprised large enclosures, boundaries and structures including an unusual moated structure potentially used for storage. Isotopic analysis of plant and animal remains from salt production and settlement sites has raised questions about grazing patterns and the relationships between agricultural and salt production. This comparison has also been made for the pottery assemblages allowing for the potential differences in activity and subsequent connectivity to be explored.Evidence of medieval and post-medieval activity was also uncovered. Beginning in the early medieval (Saxon) period and continuing through until the modern era, the excavations provide important insights into the development of rural settlement against a backdrop of landscape and environmental changes as large portions of marsh and fen were reclaimed for agriculture. Evidence of clay extraction and brick manufacture was also uncovered dating from the 15th century and into the 17th–19th centuries, including indications of brick kilns.

RRP: £38.00

The Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Central Balkans Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9798888572078

Pub Date: 16 May 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 160 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

This book presents a detailed assessment of the chronological, cultural, economic and social relations in the territory of the central Balkans (today's Serbia without Voivodina, western Bulgaria and the northern part of North Macedonia) in the period from the beginning of the 3rd to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. It is the first comprehensive study of the region at this period, in English, for over 40 years, in spite of the considerable amount of research and excavation that has been conducted in the intervening years. The natural-geographic features, topographic openness, social impacts and other factors that could influence the genesis, development and, ultimately, the demise of Bronze Age cultures in this territory are analysed.

RRP: £40.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 304

ISBN: 9798888571415

Pub Date: 15 May 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Studies in Funerary Archaeology

Illustrations: 180 b/w and color illustrations

Description:

Since the dawn of archaeology, the study of funerary contexts has provided invaluable insights into past societies, a trend that persists in contemporary research. Ongoing discoveries, site reevaluations, and advancements in techniques like DNA analysis continually reshape our understanding of the past.In the specific contexts we are addressing – the emergence of the first farming and herding communities in the Western Mediterranean – few regions in Europe display such systematic funerary practices.

RRP: £55.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9781789259674

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: B&W and Color images

Description:

A joint Icelandic–US archaeological project in North Iceland examined the development of the farmstead settlement pattern from the initial Norse settlement of Iceland in c. AD 870–1300. The results were compared with the distribution of early Christian household cemeteries following the conversion in AD 1000 and the later institutionalization of the Catholic church in the 12th century.

RRP: £50.00

Silchester: The Landscape Setting of the Iron Age Oppidum and Roman City Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 368

ISBN: 9798888570401

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: 190 B/W and colour illustrations

Description:

The landscape setting of the Iron Age oppidum and Roman city of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) was initially explored through analysis of the available aerial photography and Lidar data over c. 1000 km2. Focusing on a 50 km square centred on Calleva, six locations with suspected later prehistoric enclosures were sampled by coring and excavation and accompanied by extensive programmes of radiocarbon dating and environmental, especially pollen analysis.

RRP: £55.00

Space and Communal Agency in Pre-Modern Societies Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9798888571934

Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)

Illustrations: 70 b/w illustrations

Description:

Monumental spaces were fundamental in the construction of power, political order and community identities in the ancient and pre-modern world. It was for this reason that authorities invested heavily in the construction of ideal landscapes of power that embodied the basic representation about what a harmonious society and an ordered world under the inspired guidance of the ruler(s) was. Such landscapes conveyed thus powerful cultural values and ideals about the social order that had produced them, not to speak about the authorities’ ability –who designed and built them – to lead their societies. However, far from being fixed over time, those spaces underwent changes to accommodate new values, to express a new balance of power resulting in transformations, rebuilding, integration of selected aspects of the past or, simply, utter destruction of landscapes no longer functional.In some societies, ceremonies were open, addressed to the whole society―at least as witnesses―in which their rulers performed the construction of social order and received divine support. The Maya cities, for example, with their loose urban density and open spaces dominated by autonomous neighbourhoods, epitomize the ideological need to gather society as spectators. Plazas became thus essential to negotiate consent and social consensus. In other cases the absence of open spaces – including cult ones – in which the community may gather and participate in collective performances points to oligarchical and somewhat secluded configurations of power, as in pharaonic Egypt, while, in the Classical world, agoras, forums and open spaces were intended to facilitate collective political deliberation.Urban layouts may bear traces of rival uses of space, for instance between “official” ceremonial areas, reserved to pageantry displays, and areas that were more organic, difficult to control but which favoured the concentration of crafts and guilds, alternative circulation of news and construction of counterpowers, like bazaars. The archaeological focus put on ceremonial spaces and prestige buildings may thus conceal the political importance of those other spaces and the counter-power issued there, with the lack specifically-designed buildings significant in itself.The aim of this book is to explore the relation between built environments, collective identities and political agency and the potential conflicts arising from competing or alternative social uses of the space, be it public, ritual, civic or a mix of all of them. A selection of historical case-studies from different regions of the world may help rethink current concepts and views about the traces that communal political agency left in the organization of settlements and in planning monumental areas. Such cases may also cast some light over the limits of rulers’ authority and the existence of collective institutions―formal or informal―rarely evoked in official sources. In the end, this book explores the importance of comparative research to address collective decision-making and communal identities in the pre-modern world.

RRP: £60.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

ISBN: 9798888571477

Pub Date: 31 Mar 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: Ancient Textiles

Illustrations: 50 b/w drawings and photographs, 25 colour photographs, charts. maps

Description:

Textile tools offer a fascinating and yet intimate approach to ancient people. Textile production has been one of the core activities for millennia, spanning from domestic production to royal needs. Textiles were light and easy to transport goods, often exchanged over long distances.

RRP: £40.00

Format: Hardback

Pages: 224

ISBN: 9781789258981

Pub Date: 31 Mar 2025

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Illustrations: B/W and colour

Description:

Early medieval stone sculptures survive across Europe: at waysides, in architectural settings and in churches and graveyards, and provide an exceptional source for understanding the aesthetics and beliefs of early medieval communities. England is no exception to this. Thousands of intact and fragmentary stone monuments survive from the seventh to eleventh centuries CE, evidencing the emergence of a rich Anglo-Saxon sculptural tradition in stone.

RRP: £50.00