Archaeology Hero Image
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.

Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology Cover Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology Cover
Format: 
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9789464270402
Pub Date: 14 Mar 2023
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 32fc / 30bw
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9789464270396
Pub Date: 14 Mar 2023
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 32fc / 30bw
Description:
While terrestrial archaeology has engaged with contemporary philosophy, maritime archaeology has remained in comparative disciplinary – or subdisciplinary – isolation. However, the issues that humans face in the Anthropocene – from global warming to global pandemics – call for transdisciplinary cooperation, and for thinking together beyond the confines of the human-centered philosophical tradition. Growing areas such as the “blue humanities” and “oceanic thinking” draw directly on our maritime past, even as they ponder the future.
Revealing Christian Heritage Cover Revealing Christian Heritage Cover
Format: 
Pages: 110
ISBN: 9789464261585
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 5fc / 15bw
Pages: 110
ISBN: 9789464261578
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2023
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 5fc / 15bw
Description:
This volume collects different case studies of rediscovery of Christian antiquities between 1860-1930 in Europe and the Mediterranean basin, in order to stimulate reflections about the impact of these rediscoveries on our culture in a period of great political transition. By turning the light on lesser-known stories on a wider European and Mediterranean horizon (Greece, Holy Land, Eritrea, Malta, Norway), this book gives a strong contribution to the history of Christian archaeology. All articles deal with many topics of the field (museology, cultural heritage protection law, history of religious orders, field archaeology, military explorations), and therefore offer a strong interdisciplinary cut.
From Hunter-Gatherers to Early Christians Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781914427220
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2023
Imprint: Windgather Press
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Jutting out some thirty miles into the Irish Sea, from the western edge of Snowdonia, the Llŷn Peninsula, in north-west Wales, is renowned for its stunning beaches and countryside, with much of its landscape designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The peninsula is also home to a remarkable and abundant collection of archaeological sites and monuments, some of national importance, which bear witness to the ancient societies who once inhabited this narrow finger of land on the western fringe of Britain. This abundantly illustrated book examines this rich corpus of archaeological evidence, beginning with the faint but fascinating traces that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers have left in the landscape of the Llŷn Peninsula and ending in the early medieval period, with about 9,000 years of human habitation thus covered in its pages.
Sailing the Monsoon Winds in Miniature Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
ISBN: 9780861592302
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2023
Series: British Museum Research Publications
Illustrations: 175 illustrations
Description:
Models of non-European watercrafts are commonly found in museum collections in the UK and throughout the world. These objects are understudied, rarely used in museum displays and at risk of disposal. In addition, there are several gaps in current understanding of traditional watercraft from the Indian Ocean, the region spanning from East Africa through to western Australia.
Ancient DNA and the European Neolithic Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781789259100
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Illustrations: B/W
Description:
The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic.
Breaking Images Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9781789259148
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS)
Illustrations: B/W
Description:
Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris of past civilisations. It is rare that things have been preserved as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past.
Living (World) Heritage Cities Cover Living (World) Heritage Cities Cover
Format: 
Pages: 250
ISBN: 9789464261431
Pub Date: 13 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 84fc / 3bw
Pages: 250
ISBN: 9789464261424
Pub Date: 13 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 84fc / 3bw
Description:
Cities are in a constant process of change and are the theater of interaction among people and their complex, historically multi-layered, culturally diverse living environment. Therefore, various interests, needs, and values affect these dynamics of interaction and urban change, which bring challenges and opportunities for the development of cities. Particularly, when urban development deals with such complex living environment and the management and conservation of both listed and non-listed heritage – as in the case of World Heritage cities – a variety of public and private, and global and local stakeholders are affected by processes of change.
Connectivity Matters! Cover Connectivity Matters! Cover
Format: 
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9789464270280
Pub Date: 06 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Series: ROOTS Booklet Series
Illustrations: 25fc / 10bw
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9789464270273
Pub Date: 06 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Series: ROOTS Booklet Series
Illustrations: 25fc / 10bw
Description:
This book is a presentation of the basic concept of social, environmental and cultural connectivity in past societies, as embodied in a diversity of disciplines in the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS. Thus, rather pragmatically driven ideas of socio-environmental connectivities are described, which form the basis of the Cluster of Excellence in its research. A discussion of the fluidness of the term ‘connectivity’ and the applicability of the concept opens the arena for diverse interpretations.
Cooking with plants in ancient Europe and beyond Cover Cooking with plants in ancient Europe and beyond Cover
Format: 
Pages: 526
ISBN: 9789464270341
Pub Date: 01 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 207fc / 29bw
Pages: 526
ISBN: 9789464270334
Pub Date: 01 Dec 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 207fc / 29bw
Description:
Plants have constituted the basis of human subsistence. This volume focuses on plant food ingredients that were consumed by the members of past societies and on the ways these ingredients were transformed into food. The thirty chapters of this book unfold the story of culinary transformation of cereals, pulses as well as of a wide range of wild and cultivated edible plants.
An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology, Volume 2 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 394
ISBN: 9780822947479
Pub Date: 29 Nov 2022
Description:
In three volumes, historian Jole Shackelford delineates the history of the study of biological rhythms - now widely known as chronobiology - from antiquity into the twentieth century. Perhaps the most well-known biological rhythm is the circadian rhythm, tied to the cycles of day and night and often referred to as the “body clock.” But there are many other biological rhythms, and although scientists and the natural philosophers who preceded them have long known about them, only in the past thirty years have a handful of pioneering scientists begun to study such rhythms in plants and animals seriously.
Art in Early-Modern Law Cover Art in Early-Modern Law Cover
Format: 
Pages: 246
ISBN: 9789464261325
Pub Date: 24 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 4fc / 13 bw
Pages: 246
ISBN: 9789464261318
Pub Date: 24 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 4fc / 13 bw
Description:
In the early modern centuries, several European states issued pioneering regulations to protect what they thought of as “heritage” – that is, antiquities, monuments, and paintings considered important for their country’s splendour. These early protocols have had a substantial impact on the development of legal and aesthetic approaches to heritage protection in recent times.In this volume, legislation is explored from both a legal and art-historical perspective in order to understand how cultural, political, and social factors influenced the introduction of the first systems for safeguarding “precious artefacts” in early modern Europe.
Photo-Museology Cover Photo-Museology Cover
Format: 
Pages: 474
ISBN: 9789088906336
Pub Date: 17 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Series: Pacific Presences
Illustrations: 289fc / 76bw
Pages: 474
ISBN: 9789088906329
Pub Date: 17 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Series: Pacific Presences
Illustrations: 289fc / 76bw
Description:
Ethnographic museums, now often rebranded as collections of ‘world cultures’, appear permanently problematic, even as their contexts and the orientation of their activities change. Across Europe and elsewhere, curators and other museum staff are committed to dialogue and collaboration with the peoples from whom collections were made. But their vast assemblages of artefacts, removed from countries of origin primarily during the colonial period, and assumed, mostly inaccurately, to have been looted, seem always in question.
Classical Controversies Cover Classical Controversies Cover
Format: 
Pages: 210
ISBN: 9789464270372
Pub Date: 16 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 7fc
Pages: 210
ISBN: 9789464270365
Pub Date: 16 Nov 2022
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 7fc
Description:
Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and for what reasons? This volume aims to showcase a number of illustrative examples, and thus to provide a deeper understanding of twenty-first-century reception of Antiquity.
An Introduction to Peatland Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781789257557
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Peatlands are regarded as having exceptional archaeological value, due to the fact the waterlogged conditions of these wetlands can preserve organic remains that are almost entirely lost from the majority of dryland contexts. This is certainly true, although the remarkable preservation of sites and artefacts is just one aspect of their archaeological importance. This book provides an accessible introduction to the ecology and formation processes of peatlands, and to the different archaeological and palaeoenvironmental techniques that have been developed and adapted for the study of these environments.
Chariots, Swords and Spears Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781789255423
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This volume brings together recent excavations at two sites in Pocklington, East Yorkshire. The main focus of the volume is examination of Iron Age burials, which included chariots, swords, and spears, along with inclusion of earlier Prehistoric and later Roman activity. The excavations have enabled further scientific evidence for migration and mobility in the Iron Age population and secure chronologies for artefacts.
Seventeenth-century Water Gardens and the Birth of Modern Scientific thought in Oxford Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781914427169
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2022
Imprint: Windgather Press
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Based on a decade of archaeological investigation and historical research, this book tells the story of the Copes of Hanwell Castle in north Oxfordshire and the creation of a garden with links to the development of scientific thinking in Oxford in the late seventeenth century. New research using Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire as a starting point has uncovered details of a remarkable family and their rise and tragic downfall, their social circle, that included some great names in the development of early scientific thinking, and their garden that in effect became a place dedicated to the wonders of technology. The complex tale weaves together the activities of a royalist agent, Richard Allestree, a prodigious musician, Thomas Baltzar, John Claridge, a Hanwell Shepherd with a penchant for weather forecasting, and Sir Anthony Cope who in an atmosphere of secrecy and distrust began to gather together a community that eventually was named by Plot as The New Atlantis, a reference to a book published earlier in the century by Sir Francis Bacon in which he suggests a model for a Utopian science-focused society.