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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.
Butrint 8 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571323
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024
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.
Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9798888571125
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 100 color and B/W illustrations
Description:
For ambitious late antique homeowners seeking to demonstrate their status and taste, water and its display offered almost infinite possibilities. Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West: Cultivating Living Buildings presents the first synthesis of the archaeological evidence for late antique water features in both urban houses and extra-urban villas across the western Empire. Ginny Wheeler examines a wide and varied range of examples: from decorative basins and pools to fountains of all forms to water-equipped dining couches.
Obsidian Vessels in the Prehistoric and Early Historic Near East Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9798888570623
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 360 b/w and color imgaes
Description:
Obsidian, a shiny volcanic glass, was first used to make vessels in the mid-sixth millennium BC in the Near East, although other stone had been exploited for vessel manufacture since the thirteenth millennium BC. Unlike the stone used to make the earliest vessels, which was acquired from local and regional sources, obsidian had to be obtained from volcanoes located hundreds of kilometers from where vessels were made and used. The obsidian from these sources had long been exploited for making tools and by the tenth millennium BC obsidian artifacts can be found in communities located far distant from the sources.
British Pottery: The First 3000 Years Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9798888570715
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 70 B/W illustrations
Description:
Pottery was at the heart of the ‘Neolithic package’ appearing in Britain with the first farmers around 4000 BC. It arrived as a mature technology and was essential to the new, largely sedentary, lifestyle and economy. It transformed storage and cooking practices, and the earliest ceramics seem to have been essential equipment in the new practice of dairying.
Coins, Riches and Lands Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789259902
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 120 B/W illustrations
Description:
Land was the ideal store of wealth in the ancient Mediterranean world. It brought social respectability, and its possession allowed participation in the politics of the cities governed by landowning elites. Crucial defense of the interests of a given polity through armed services often involved the distribution of lands to laborers still not integrated in these societies.
Early Insular Art at the Crossroads Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888571064
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
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.
Early Insular Art at the Crossroads Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9798888571088
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
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.
Islands and Communities Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9798888571514
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 15 B/W illustrations and 20 colour illustrations
Description:
Water may separate islands and the mainland, but the sea also offers a vital link. This volume is one of three major outputs of the research and public engagement project ‘Being an Islander’: Art and Identity of the Large Mediterranean Islands, implemented between 2019 and 2024 at the University of Cambridge. This project aimed to elucidate what defines island identity in the Mediterranean.
Ancient Effigy Mound Landscapes of Upper Midwestern North America Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781785700873
Pub Date: 15 Sep 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
Illustrations: black/white and colour illustrations
Description:
Between c. AD 700 and 1100, Late Woodland people of the Upper Midwest used the topography and other features of the natural landscape to create vast ceremonial landscapes consisting of thousands of earthen mounds sculpted into animals and animal spirits that mirrored their belief and clan-based social structure and that served an important role in mortuary ritual. In so doing, the Late Woodland people created quite visible three-dimensional maps of ancient cosmology and social structures that are similar to the beliefs and social systems of more recent Indian people.
Colonisation and Christianity Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789259674
Pub Date: 15 Sep 2024
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.
The Egyptian Administration in the Old Kingdom Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 172
ISBN: 9798888571668
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
A generally held belief is that there was a downward trend in the authority and power of the king and a corresponding increase in the influence of officials over the course of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. This could be seen reflected in the increasing size, complexity and lavishness of their tombs, the cost of which was generally met by the official himself. If the tomb owner died before completing his tomb, it was either finished by his son, or a close relative, or left in an unfinished state.
Forsaken Relics Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9798888571149
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)
Illustrations: 100 B/W illustrations
Description:
Forsaken Relics examines the intricate mechanisms of ritualistic appropriation of ruined and/or abandoned assets and artifacts. It explores how this process occurs in situations where there is legislation to regulate the appropriation of ownerless property, as well as in cases where such rules are either absent or contested, leading to disputes and conflicts.Every society has developed its unique ways of managing the re-appropriation of ‘ownerless things’, such as places and houses abandoned after conflicts, crises, or natural disasters, forsaken cemeteries, tombs, and forgotten goods.
Apedemak: Lion God of Meroe Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9798888571262
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
The rescue excavation of Egyptian sites in advance of construction of the Assuan Dam contributed greatly to the understanding of the ancient Egyptian and Sudanese civilisations in the Nile valley. This book examines cultural relationships in the last centuries BC and first centuries AD centred on the ancient city of Meroe, which lies on the east bank of the Nile between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts. It was one of two principal cities, and the centre of political and religious power, of a civilisation that flourished between the 8th century BC and 4th century AD, extending over the area of northern Sudan.
Egyptian Stelae, Reliefs and Paintings from the Petrie Collection Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 110
ISBN: 9798888571286
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
This is a facsimile reissue of part III of H.M Stewart’s three part complete catalogue of the inscribed stelae, reliefs and paintings acquired by Flinders Petrie from his many Egyptian excavations and intended as a teaching collection. Over 140 monuments, primarily of the Late Period are described, translated and illustrated with comments on techniques and materials, and details of provenance, date and bibliographical references.
Canon and Proportion in Egyptian Art Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 134
ISBN: 9798888571224
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
This facsimile reissue of the 1975 second edition of Iversen’s Canon and Proportion brings back into print a seminal work originally published in 1955. Iversen describes a canon – that is, a set of rules of proportions – advanced and used by the artists of Egypt. In order to interpret the stylistic message of the Egyptian system of proportion he undertakes a study of the principles of its construction, an analysis of its modules and presents an unambiguous numerical definition of the ratios governing its units and parts, demonstrating its use with illustrated examples.
Egyptian Sculpture Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 134
ISBN: 9798888571200
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Oxbow Classics in Egyptology
Description:
This facsimile reissue of Anthea Page’s catalog of the stone and wooden statuary in the Petrie Museum makes available again a major corpus of material. The bulk of statuary in the museum was purchased since the finest sculpture from Petrie’s own excavations rightly went to Cairo and other museums. While the sculpture in his own collection covers the whole length of Egyptian dynastic history illustrating many different schools and qualities of workmanship, it does not provide a comprehensive view of the art of the Egyptian sculptor.
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