Top Ten 2009

We announce our bestsellers for the last 12 months, and should you not have got your hands on them thus far there's money off until the end of the year.

The Modern Miambist

We announce the winners of our competition to find a worthy successor to Herodas

More Damaged Books

We've done a stock check over the Summer months. As you can imagine it turned up a few volumes that have seen better days. Here they are at knock down prices.

New Bargains – General Interest, Prehistory, Egypt and the Ancient Near East

A first look at our most recent bargain books.

New Bargains - the Classical World

A first look at our most recent bargain books.

New Bargains - the Medieval World

A first look at our most recent bargain books.

Of all the new books that have passed over the desks of the Oxbow staff this month, these, for whatever reason, are the ones that grabbed their attention.

And for one month only, we are offering them to readers of OXeN at a special price!

New Book News

Our New Book News catalogue, number 79, containing details of the latest releases in all our subject areas plus some cracking bargains is just out. If you’ve bought books from us recently you should hopefully already have your copy, but in case not, it's also available online:

• Method and Theory; Prehistory, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East (543 Kb)
• The Classical World (333 Kb)
• The Medieval World (638 Kb)

• Bargains (101 Kb)

New Releases

The Book of Alexander (Libro de Alexandre)
edited and translated with an introduction and notes by Peter Such and Richard Rabone
Paperback. US$50.00
Hardback. US$80.00

The Libro de Alexandre is an epic poem about the life of Alexander the Great, written by an anonymous Spanish cleric in the thirteenth century. It is the most substantial poem (and almost certainly the first) composed in the learned cuaderna vía verse form and provides a unique insight into the intellectual world from which it sprang. The poem conveys the grim message of Alexander's life, the sense of hubris and the horror of his fall from greatness and domination of the world to the bleak obscurity of the grave. As well as relaying the story of a great ancient figure, the poet also comments on the society and political situation of early thirteenth-century Spain. The combination of eras makes this poem strikingly representative of its time. Peter Such and Richard Rabone's edition in the Hispanic Classics series will greatly illuminate this substantial and important text, with a wide-ranging introduction, Spanish text with facing-page English translation and notes.

Structure, Image, Ornament: Architectural Sculpture in the Greek World
edited by Peter Schultz and Ralf von den Hoff
Hardback. US$80.00

This volume presents the proceedings of a conference hosted by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens in 2004. There are additional contributions from Patricia Butz, Robin Osborne, Katherine Schwab, Justin St. P. Walsh, Hilda Westervelt and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek. The contents are divided into four sections I. Structure and Ornament; II. Technique and Agency; III. Myth and Narrative and IV. Diffusion and Influence. Highlights include Robin Osbornes discussion of What you can do with a chariot but cant do with a satyr on a Greek temple; Ralf von den Hoffs consideration of the Athenian treasury at Delphi; and Katherine Schwabs presentation of New evidence for Parthenon east metope 14. The papers not only cover a great variety of issues in architectural sculpture but also present a range of case studies from all over the Greek world. The result is an important collection of current research.

Thinking Mesolithic
by Stefan Karol Kozlowski
Hardback. US$120.00, US$35.98

Studies of the European Mesolithic have gone through a renaissance since the seminal Warsaw conference on the subject in 1973, and Stefan Kozlowski has been at its heart. This book presents a comprehensive, re-edited selection of his most important writings on the subject, along with new papers written especially for this edition. Kozlowski begins with thematic chapters exploring Mesolithic archaeology's key themes - the technologies people employed, the human ecology of Mesolithic communities and chronology. In a series of core chapters arranged according to European macro-regions, he then examines the diversity of Europe's Mesolithic cultures, remembering Kapuscinski's adage that 'for most people the world ends on the threshold of their own home, the outskirts of their own village, the borders of the valley they live in at the farthest.' He argues that the Mesolithic 'stage' resulted from the adaptation of Palaeolithic tundra communities to the new ecological conditions of the early Post Glacial, to a forested environment where the primitive agriculture that emerged in the Mediterranean region was not possible. With his eye simultaneously on both the continental and local levels, Kozlowski offers a compelling portrait of a period in which Europe was characterised by a wide range of different human ecologies, and seethed with human activity from the Pyrenees to the Urals.

A Tale of Unknown Unknowns: Warren Field
by Hilary K Murray, J Charles Murray and Shannon M Fraser
Hardback. US$40.00

The site of Warren Field in Scotland revealed two unusual and enigmatic features; an alignment of pits and a large, rectangular feature interpreted as a timber building. Excavations confirmed that the timber structure was an early Neolithic building and that the pits had been in use from the Mesolithic. This report details the excavations and reveals that the hall was associated with the storage and or consumption of cereals, including bread wheat, and pollen evidence suggests that the hall may have been part of a larger area of activity involving cereal cultivation and processing. The pits are fully documented and environmental evidence sheds light on the surrounding landscape.

Greek Personal Religion: A Reader
by Stephen Instone
Paperback. US$50.00

The relationship between the individual and the divine in ancient Greece is a complex one, which has tended to be neglected in favour of studies of state religion, festivals, sanctuaries and oracles. This reader presents a selection of texts that shed light on many potential aspects of an individual's personal religious beliefs and influences including divine epiphany, superstition, epilepsy, athletics victories, life after death, philosophy, pollution, Orphism and curse tablets. The Greek authors include Homer, Hesiod, Theophrastus, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Pindar, Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle as well as a Hippocratic text, orphic gold leaves, and fragments of the Derveni Papyrus. Each text has an introduction explaining the background and significance of the passage, an English translation and commentaries. The Greek texts are given in a separate section at the end of the book.

Augustine: De civitate Dei. City of God book V
edited with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary by P.G. Walsh
Paperback. US$36.00
Hardback. US$80.00

This edition of St Augustine's City of God is the only one in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In these books, written in the aftermath of the sack of Rome in AD 410 by the Goths, Augustine replies to the pagans, who attributed the fall of Rome to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the pagan gods.

Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe
edited by Peter Clark
Paperback. US$80.00

New and exciting discoveries on either side of the English Channel in recent years have begun to show that people living in the coastal zones of Belgium, southern Britain, northern France and the Netherlands shared a common material culture during the Bronze Age, between three and four thousand years ago. They used similar styles of pottery and metalwork, lived in the same kind of houses and buried their dead in the same kind of tombs, often quite different to those used by their neighbours further inland. The sea did not appear to be a barrier to these people but rather a highway, connecting communities in a unique cultural identity; the 'People of La Manche'. Symbolic of these maritime Bronze Age Connections is the iconic Dover Bronze Age boat, one of Europe's greatest prehistoric discoveries and testament to the skill and technical sophistication of our Bronze Age ancestors. This monograph presents papers from a conference held in Dover in 2006 organised by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust, which brought together scholars from many different countries to explore and celebrate these ancient seaborne contacts. Twelve wide-ranging chapters explore themes of travel, exchange, production, magic and ritual that throw new light on our understanding of the seafaring peoples of the second millennium BC.

Land and People: Papers in Memory of John G. Evans
edited by Michael J. Allen, Niall Sharples and Terry O'Connor
Hardback. US$70.00

This volume is derived, in concept, from a conference held in honour of John Evans by the School of History and Archaeology and The Prehistoric Society at Cardiff University in March 2006. It brings together papers that address themes and landscapes on a variety of levels. They cover geographical, methodological and thematic areas that were of interest to, and had been studied by, John Evans. The volume is divided into five sections, which echo themes of importance in British prehistory. They include papers on aspects of environmental archaeology, experiments and philosophy; new research on the nature of woodland on the chalklands of southern England; coasts and islands; people, process and social order, and snails and shells - a strong part of John Evans' career. This volume presents a range of papers examining people's interaction with the landscape in all its forms. The papers provide a diverse but cohesive picture of how archaeological landscapes are viewed within current research frameworks and approaches, while also paying tribute to the innovative and inspirational work of one of the leading protagonists of environmental archaeology and the holistic approach to landscape interpretation.