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.
All the Emperor's Men Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 496
ISBN: 9781842173008
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: approx 200 illus and plans
Description:
Trajan's Column, set up in the heart of Rome, was completed in 113 CE to commemorate the emperor Trajan's wars across the Danube. Its reliefs provide a uniquely detailed picture of the army at war in perfect harmony with Trajan who in his own lifetime and forever after was accounted 'The Best of Emperors'. The sculptures are a panegyric to military achievement of the troops and to leadership by their emperor, but, much more than this, they have exerted an enormous influence on modern perceptions of Roman art, architecture, warfare, politics, religion, ethnography and geography.
Cahokia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781785708855
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American Landscapes
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.
Strøby Toftegård Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9798888571491
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Pre-Christian Cult Sites
Illustrations: 312 color plans, drawings, photos, 34 b/w
Description:
Strøby Toftegård: Halls, Hierarchies and Social Dynamics in Late Iron Age and Viking Age Denmark presents and considers the archaeological material from the site of Strøby Toftegård in the eastern part of Zealand, Denmark, where comprehensive excavations took place between 1994 and 2013. The book seeks to qualify the interpretation of Farm 1 as the residence of a magnate from c. AD 650 to c.
Landscapes of (Re)Conquest Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9798888570692
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 250 B/W and color illustrations
Description:
Frontiers were an integral feature of every medieval polity, and their spaces were defined by opposing spheres of influence, contact and connectivity. As these polities expanded and contracted, often as a result of military conquest and territorial annexation, their permeable edges became defined by transformative cultural landscapes. Here, the encounters between native or resident and incoming populations, from small elite groups through to larger numbers of migrants from diverse social backgrounds, resulted in varying degrees of cultural hybridity.
New Voices in Iranian Archaeology Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571453
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 110 B/W illustrations
Description:
This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity.
The Bronze Age Collective Graves of Qarn al-Harf, Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) 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 south-east 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).
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.
Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9798888571774
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 86 B/W photos and line drawings
Description:
Archaeoacoustics, the study of sound in the past, is increasingly attracting attention. Although some work, particularly in musical archaeology, had been conducted previously, the field received a significant boost when the term itself was coined by Scarre and Lawson in their 2006 volume of that name, which brought together two major distinct strands: archaeomusicology and the acoustics of archaeological spaces. Since 2006, the number of publications has steadily been growing, yet the field remains in its infancy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.