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Archaeology

In September 2022 Oxbow's bookshop and distribution business merged with Pen & Sword Books, a family run independent publisher of history books. As Casemate UK, this new distribution business will continue to bring you the best books in the field of archaeology and related disciplines from our partner publishers. The Oxbow Books publishing imprint remains as a separate entity, still sold and distributed exclusively by us. Browse the archaeology subjects below, or visit our Ancient History and Medieval History books landing pages in the menus above.

Art, Image, Power and Place Cover
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
Cahokia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781785708855
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The large American Indian city of Cahokia sits amidst a diverse natural landscape within the larger central Mississippi river valley. Well positioned on the rich agricultural soils of the Mississippi river bottomlands of the Amercan Bottom it is at the core of a cultural landscape that its residents helped shape. In this volume the editors and authors attempt to not just focus on Cahokia and its configuration but also the other towns and settlements dispersed throughout the region extant for nearly four centuries.
RRP: £38.00
Southeast Arabia at the Dawn of the Second millennium  Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544
ISBN: 9781789257953
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
The end of the 3rd millennium was a time of significant transformation in Southeast Arabia (the United Arab Emirates and Northern Oman). The cultural homogeneity of the preceding Early Bronze Age, Umm an-Nar period (c. 2700–2000 BC) came to an end and gave way to the Middle Bronze Age, Wadi Suq period (2000–1600 BC).
RRP: £65.00
Animating the Dead Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9798888571439
Pub Date: 10 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 300 B/W and colour illustrations
Description:
This book provides the exciting results of a long-term project examining Bronze Age round barrow construction and burial practices in Orkney, Scotland. A main focus of this research is on the act of cremation; a technology of bodily metamorphosis as articulated through complex mortuary practices, which produced a distinctive form of funerary architecture. This, and other topical themes, are explored through the results of extensive excavations at several barrow cemeteries including Linga Fiold, Gitterpitten, Varme Dale, Vestrafiold and the Knowes of Trotty, the latter being famous for rich grave goods including gold discs and amber beads.
RRP: £40.00
Chariots on fire, reins of power Cover Chariots on fire, reins of power Cover
Format: 
Pages: 546
ISBN: 9789464262957
Pub Date: 18 Nov 2024
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 235fc / 77bw
Pages: 546
ISBN: 9789464262940
Pub Date: 18 Nov 2024
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 235fc / 77bw
Description:
‘Chariots on Fire, Reins of Power’ presents the first comprehensive overview of 5th century BC elite graves from the Lower Rhine-Meuse region. Characterised by imported grave goods such as bronze vessels, horse tack, weapons and occasionally two-wheeled vehicles, these strikingly rich cremation burials are the northernmost representatives of an elite culture that had its roots in the Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène culture of more southern regions in France and the German Rhineland. This book is the result of an interdisciplinary study of this northern group of graves, prompted by the recent discovery of a new chariot burial at Heumen, the Netherlands.
RRP: £150.00
RRP: £85.00
British Pottery: The First 3000 Years Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9798888570715
Pub Date: 31 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.
RRP: £39.95
Forsaken Relics Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9798888571149
Pub Date: 31 Oct 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.
RRP: £50.00
Damjili Cave Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888571804
Pub Date: 18 Oct 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 160 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
Modern archaeological research carried out since the late 19th century has sufficiently demonstrated that the beginning of the food production economy and the establishment of a farming society had a significant impact on the shaping of subsequent human history. Accordingly, these processes of Neolithization have attracted a great deal of interest from archaeologists and anthropologists worldwide. The South Caucasus, i.
RRP: £55.00
New Perspectives on Ancient Nubia Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 345
ISBN: 9781463243425
Pub Date: 01 Oct 2024
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Gorgias Studies in the Ancient Near East
Description:
Ancient Nubia played key political, social, and economic roles in the ancient world, yet knowledge of Nubian societies remains regrettably narrow, with Nubia often disregarded as derivative of Egypt. This volume provides a timely corrective to this outlook, centering Nubian history and archaeology and presenting research from postcolonial and anti-racist perspectives. In addition to demonstrating Nubiology’s potential impact on Egyptological, classical, and biblical scholarship, this volume offers a new window into African achievements and dominance in the ancient world.
A Date with the Two Cerne Giants Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781914427374
Pub Date: 20 Aug 2024
Imprint: Windgather Press
Illustrations: 75 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
The date of the Cerne Giant has long been a matter for debate, as exemplified by a public and televised debate of March 1996, published as The Cerne Giant: An Antiquity on Trial (1999, Oxbow Books). Excavations were conducted in 2020 by the National Trust in the centenary year of its ownership of the Giant. The excavations were limited and targeted in extent and scope, the aim was to date the actual construction of the iconic figure by absolute dating methods (OSL).
RRP: £24.95
Northwold Manor Reborn Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9798888571347
Pub Date: 15 Jun 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 400 color and B/W illustrations
Description:
Northwold Manor is a multi-period listed building (grade II*), about which almost nothing was known. Uninhabited since 1955, it had fallen into a state of extreme dereliction, and was beyond economic repair when the author purchased the property in 2014. He and his wife, Diane Gibbs, embarked on a major restoration that ran for nine years.
Guildford Fire Station Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9780904220926
Pub Date: 14 Jun 2024
Series: Oxford Archaeology Monograph
Illustrations: 183
Description:
Excavations carried out prior to the construction of a new fire station in Guildford, Surrey, revealed a well preserved, in situ Late Upper Palaeolithic flint scatter. The site lay on cold climate fluvial sandy gravels deposited in braided stream systems prior to the onset of the Late Glacial (Windermere) interstadial. Typological analysis of the flint and OSL dates suggest that the scatter itself dates from the first half of the Late Glacial (Windermere) interstadial (c 1415KBP).
Slade End Farm and Winterbrook Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 340
ISBN: 9781905905522
Pub Date: 14 Jun 2024
Series: Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph
Illustrations: 145
Description:
This volume reports on two excavations carried out by Oxford Archaeology on the outskirts of Wallingford, at Slade End Farm and Winterbrook. The two sites provide windows into the same gravel terrace landscape and together shed significant new light on the prehistory of the south Oxfordshire Thames Valley. Slade End Farm was repeatedly visited for settlement in the early Neolithic.
The Archaeology of Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station, Somerset. Excavations in 2012-16 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 424
ISBN: 9781999822248
Pub Date: 14 Jun 2024
Series: Cotswold Archaeology Monograph
Illustrations: 277
Description:
Early Neolithic occupation (from about 3600 BC) was represented by small groups of pits which were partly contemporary with a well-known round barrow – a protected monument called Wick Barrow or Pixies’ Mound – lying just outside the development site. Later prehistoric remains included Bronze Age burnt mounds, boundary ditches, a Late Bronze Age enclosure, and an Early Iron Age midden. There was more widespread Late Iron Age and Roman settlement, including a seasonally occupied linear settlement with evidence of salt-making.
The Archaeology of Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station, Somerset. Excavations in 2012-16 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781999822255
Pub Date: 13 Jun 2024
Series: Cotswold Archaeology Monograph
Illustrations: 160
Description:
The cemetery was excavated in its entirety and contained the remains of around 300 individuals. Its form is shown to have many characteristics in common with other cemeteries of this period in the western British Isles, including the extended, supine posture of the deceased in simple earth-cut graves largely aligned in a west/east orientation. There were a limited number and range of grave accompaniments.
Community, Technology and Tradition Cover Community, Technology and Tradition Cover
Format: 
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9789464270914
Pub Date: 04 Jun 2024
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 23fc / 34bw
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9789464270907
Pub Date: 23 May 2024
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 23fc / 34bw
Description:
In the second millennium BC, mining for copper ore on the Great Orme, Wales, created one of Europe’s largest surviving prehistoric copper mines. The ore from the mine was smelted into metal that was cast and worked into the rich variety of copper and bronze objects synonymous with the Bronze Age in Britain and Europe.This book presents an original synthesis and reinterpretation of the complex prehistoric archaeology of the Great Orme mine.