Prehistory & Ancient History  /  Ancient Near East
Looking Closely Cover Looking Closely Cover
Format: 
Pages: 500
ISBN: 9789088907678
Pub Date: 10 Oct 2019
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 195fc/117bw
Pages: 500
ISBN: 9789088907654
Pub Date: 10 Oct 2019
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 195fc/117bw
Description:
Soviet archaeological research in southern Turkmenistan revealed a series of small Late Neolithic and Aeneolithic villages strung along the streams that emerge from the Kopet Dag and water the narrow foothill zone separating the mountains from the Kara Kum desert. A commonly accepted premise of their work was that these communities garnered their technological knowledge if not their populations from regions to the south and west in present-day Iran.Since 2010 we have reinvestigated one of these sites, the small Late Neolithic (ca.
Fashioned Selves Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789252545
Pub Date: 15 May 2019
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The study of dress in antiquity has expanded in the last 20 years, evolving from investigations of costume and ethnicity in ancient art and texts and analyses of terms relating to textiles and their production, to broader studies of the social roles of dressed bodies in ancient contexts, texts, and images. This volume emerges from Approaches to Dress and the Body sessions at the Annual Meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2016 and 2017, as well as sessions relating to ancient dress and personal adornment at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in 2018. Following the broad notion of dress first presented in Eicher and Roach-Higgins in 1992 as the “assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body,” the contributions to this volume study varied materials, including physical markings on the body, durable goods related to dressed bodies in archaeological contexts, dress as represented in the visual arts as well as in texts, most bringing overlapping bodies of evidence into play.
Seafaring and Seafarers in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Cover Seafaring and Seafarers in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Cover
Format: 
Pages: 285
ISBN: 9789088905551
Pub Date: 20 Sep 2018
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 20fc/40bw
Pages: 285
ISBN: 9789088905544
Pub Date: 20 Sep 2018
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 20fc/40bw
Description:
Seafaring is a mode of travel, a way to traverse maritime space that enables not only the transport of goods and materials but also of people and ideas — communicating and sharing knowledge across the sea and between different lands. Seagoing ships under sail were operating between the Levant, Egypt, Cyprus and Anatolia by the mid-third millennium BC and within the Aegean by the end of that millennium. By the Late Bronze Age (after ca.
Relentlessly Plain Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 442
ISBN: 9781789250848
Pub Date: 30 Aug 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
The prehistoric site of Tell Sabi Abyad lies in the valley of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates in northern Syria. Between 2001 and 2008 excavations focused on the north-western, western and southwestern slopes of the main mound (Operations III, IV and V). Relentlessly Plain presents the results of detailed investigations into the 7th millennium BC ceramic assemblages recovered from those excavations by an interdisciplinary group of scholars.
RRP: £60.00
The Early Bronze Age Tombs of Jebel Hafit: Danish Archaeological Investigations in Abu Dhabi 1961-1971 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 245
ISBN: 9788793423046
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2018
Description:
The Early Bronze Age Tombs of Jebel Hafit presents fifty burial mounds excavated by Moesgaard Museum in 1961-1971 in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the Arabian Gulf. These excavations were the first archaeological investigations at all in this part of the world, and they throw light on the beginning of the Bronze Age on the Oman Peninsula. The graves represent a fundamental transformation of the relationship between humans and the environment in the region, preceding the emergence of oasis agriculture.
Sinews of Empire Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781785705960
Pub Date: 31 May 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has not only offers tools to identify, map, visualize and, in some cases, even quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source material, but also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade, and ideology that operated within, below, and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.
RRP: £40.00
With Alexander in India and Central Asia Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781785705847
Pub Date: 29 Mar 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
Alexander conquered most parts of the Western World, but there is a great deal of controversy over his invasion of India, the least known of his campaigns. In BC 327 Alexander came to India, and tried to cross the Jhelum river for the invasion, but was then confronted by King Porus who ruled an area in what is now the Punjab. According to Indian history he was stopped by Porus at his entry into the country, but most of the world still believes that Alexander won the battle.
RRP: £40.00
Arsacids, Romans and Local Elites Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781785705922
Pub Date: 21 Mar 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
For almost 500 years (247 BCE–224 CE), the Arsacid kings of Parthia ruled over a vast multi-cultural empire, which encompassed much of central Asia and the Near East. The inhabitants of this empire included a complex patchwork of Hellenized Greek-speaking elites, Iranian nobility, and semi-nomadic Asian tribesman, all of whom had their own competing cultural and economic interests. Ruling over such a diverse group of subjects required a strong military and careful diplomacy on the part of the Arsacids, who faced the added challenge of competing with the Roman empire for control of the Near East.
RRP: £36.00
Artisans versus nobility? Cover Artisans versus nobility? Cover
Format: 
Pages: 222
ISBN: 9789088903977
Pub Date: 20 Mar 2017
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 80bw/20fc
Pages: 222
ISBN: 9789088903960
Pub Date: 20 Mar 2017
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: 80bw/20fc
Description:
In prehistoric Europe hierarchic societies arose and developed technological systems and processes in the production of objects related to everyday use, on the one hand, and items of religious and symbolic character emulating prestige and luxury, on the other, while both types of objects may not always be clearly distinguishable. This volume deals with questions of how artisans and other social groups, involved in these productive processes and social practices, reacted to and interacted with the demands connected with elites identities formation, affirmation reconfirmation practices. Innovations and the development of new technologies designed to satisfy the needs of ostentatious behaviour and achieving prestige are key issues of this volume.
Archaeozoology of the Near East 9 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9781782978442
Pub Date: 17 Feb 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
This two part volume brings together over 60 specialists to present 31 papers on the latest research into archaeozoology of the Near East. The papers are wide-ranging in terms of period and geographical coverage: from Palaeolithic rock shelter assemblages in Syria to Byzantine remains in Palestine and from the Caucasus to Cyprus. Papers are grouped into thematic sections examining patterns of Palaeolithic and Neolithic subsistence in northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Iranian plateau; Palaeolithic to Neolithic faunal remains from Armenia; animal exploitation in Bronze Age urban sites; new evidence concerning pastoralism, nomadism and mobility; aspects of domestication and animal exploitation in the Arabian peninsula; several case studies on ritual animal deposits; and specific analyses of patterns of animal exploitation at urban sites in Turkey, Palestine and Jordan.
RRP: £70.00
Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9781785703591
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2017
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Life and Death in Asia Minor combines contributions in both archaeology and bioarchaeology in Asia Minor in the period ca. 200 BC – AD 1300 for the first time. The archaeology topics are wide-ranging including death and territory, death and landscape perception, death and urban transformations from pagan to Christian topography, changing tomb typologies, funerary costs, family organization, funerary rights, rituals and practices among pagans, Jews, and Christians, inhumation and Early Byzantine cremations and use and reuse of tombs.
RRP: £65.00
Tying the Threads of Eurasia Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 408
ISBN: 9789088903878
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2017
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Illustrations: >200fc
Description:
The famous ‘Silk Roads’ have long evoked a romantic picture of travel through colourful civilizations that connected the western and eastern poles of Eurasia, facilitating the exchange of exotic luxury goods, peoples, pathogens and ideas. But how far back can we trace such interaction? Increasing evidence suggests considerable time-depth for Trans-Eurasian exchange, with the expanding urban networks of the Bronze Age at times anticipating later caravan routes.
Forces of Transformation Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 236
ISBN: 9781842175033
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: BANEA monograph Series
Illustrations: 149 illus
Description:
The volume is the first in nearly a decade to focus a wide range of scholarship on one of the most compelling periods in the antiquity of the Mediterranean and Near East. It presents new interpretive approaches to the problems of the Bronze Age to Iron Age transformation, as well as re-assessments of a wide range of high profile sites and evidence ranging from the Ugaritic archives, Hazor, the Medinet Habu reliefs, Tiryns and Troy. Implications for a changing climate are also explored in the volume.
The Social Context of Technological Change Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 284
ISBN: 9781842170502
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w illus, 4 colour pls
Description:
The technological capabilities of the ancient world have long fascinated scholars and the general public alike, though scholarly debate has often seen material culture not as the development of technology, but as a tool for defining chronology and delineating the level of interactions of neighbouring societies. These fourteen papers, arising from a conference held in Oxford in September 2000, take the approach that technology plays a vital role in past socio-economic systems. They cover the Near East and associated areas, including Greece, Crete, Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Egypt from the end of the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age (1650-1150 BC), a period when many technological innovations appear for the first time.
Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near East Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
ISBN: 9781785702839
Pub Date: 06 Oct 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
The transition between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC was an era of deep economic changes in the ancient Near East. An increasing monetization of transactions, a broader use of silver, the management of the resources of temples through “entrepreneurs”, the development of new trade circuits and an expanding private, small-scale economy, transformed the role previously played by institutions such as temples and royal palaces. The 17 essays collected here analyse the economic transformations which affected the old dominant powers of the Late Bronze Age, their adaptation to a new economic environment, the emergence of new economic actors and the impact of these changes on very different social sectors and geographic areas, from small communities in the oases of the Egyptian Western Desert to densely populated urban areas in Mesopotamia.
RRP: £45.00
Ancient Irrigation Systems of the Aral Sea Area Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9781842173848
Pub Date: 24 Jul 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph
Description:
Ancient Irrigation Systems in the Aral Sea Area is the English translation of Boris Vasilevich Andrianov's work, Drevnie orositelnye sistemy priaralya, concerning the study of ancient irrigation systems and the settlement pattern in the historical region of Khorezm, south of the Aral Sea (Uzbekistan). This work holds a special place within the Soviet archaeological school because of the results obtained through a multidisciplinary approach combining aerial survey and fieldwork, surveys, and excavations. This translation has been enriched by the addition of introductions written by several eminent scholars from the region regarding the importance of the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition and the figure of Boris V.
RRP: £35.00