Homer’s Troy, or Troy’s Homer ?

Joachim Latacz’s book Troy And Homer: Towards A Solution Of An Old Mystery, examines the history of Troy both from an archaeological and literary point of view. Is the site of Hisarlik in Turkey really Troy? What was the city like? Is the Iliad a reliable historical source for the ancient city? All will be revealed.

Kate's Top Ten 'Good Deals' for Christmas

Just in time for Christmas, Kate's festive Top Ten selection may be just the thing you're looking for...

Chasing Myths

The Myths of Rome is an absorbing read, allowing the reader to learn far more than they could have imagined - especially as it begins in San Francisco...

Publish and be...paid?

Publishing a book and getting paid for it is harder than you might think.

Fancy a good read...the sort of book worth taking a holiday for?

A quick poll around the office has produced a bumper crop of holiday reads...just the thing to make the Christmas break fly by.

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.

Book of the Year

Apollo Magazine has awarded its coveted Book of the Year award to The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539) (British Museum Press 2004).

New Releases

Human Palaeoecology in the Levantine Corridor
edited by Naama Goren-Inbar and John D Speth
Paperback. GB £40.00, GB £10.00

Few areas of the world have played as prominent a role in human evolution as the Levantine Corridor, a comparatively narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the expanse of inhospitable desert to the east. The first hominids to leave Africa, over 1.5 million years ago, first entered the Levant before spreading into what is now Europe and Asia. About 100,000 years ago another African exodus, this time of anatomically modern humans, colonised the Levant before expanding into Eurasia. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, this Corridor also witnessed some of the earliest steps toward economic and social intensification, perhaps the most radical change in hominid lifestyle that ultimately paved the way for sedentary communities wholly dependent on domestic animals and cultivated plants.

The Neolithic of the Irish Sea
by Vicki Cummings, Chris Fowler

This collection of 24 papers aims to reconsider the nature and significance of the Irish Sea as an area of cultural interaction during the Neolithic period. The traditional character of work across this region has emphasised the existence of prehistoric contact, with sea routes criss-crossing between Ireland, the Isle of Man, Anglesey and the British mainland. A parallel course of investigation, however, has demonstrated that the British and Irish Neolithics were in many ways different, with distinct indigenous patterns of activity and social practices. The recent emphasis on regional studies has further produced evidence for parallel yet different processes of cultural change taking place throughout the British Isles as a whole. This volume brings together some of these regional perspectives and compares them across the Irish Sea area. The authors consider new ways to explain regional patterning in the use of material objects and relate them to past practices and social strategies. Were there practices that were shared across the Irish Sea area linking different styles of monuments and material culture, or were the media intrinsic to the message? The volume is based on papers presented at a conference held at the University of Manchester in April 2002.

Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays Vol II
edited, with Introductions, Translations and Commentaries by C Collard, M J Cropp and J Gibert
Paperback. GB £22.50
Hardback. GB £45.00

The fragmentary plays of Euripides are a body of texts still regularly increasing in number and extent. They are of very great interest in themselves, apart from the significant aid they give to the fuller appreciation of the surviving complete plays. This volume contains: Alexandros (together with Palamedes and Sisyphus), Oedipus, Andromeda, Antiope, Hypsipyle, Archelaus (415 to about 407 B.C.).

Atlantic Connections and Adaptations: Economies, environments and subsistence in lands bordering the North Atlantic
edited by Rupert A Housley and Geraint Coles
Paperback. GB £70.00, GB £10.00

Maritime communications have played a vital role in shaping both human cultures and the biogeography of the North Atlantic Realm, a region containing discrete groups of islands separated by deep water. The aim of this volume is to explore the diversity of human environments and cultural adaptations present within the eastern part of the North Atlantic Realm, from Scotland and Norway in the East to Iceland in the West. The papers explore a number of key themes, including: the origins of flora and fauna of the North Atlantic Realm and the introduction of non-indigenous species in post-glacial periods; the various stages of human colonisation, from the explorations of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in the Hebridean islands to the Norse settlement of the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland during the 8th to 10th centuries AD, and how each stage of colonisation has had its own ecological characteristics and consequences for indigenous flora and fauna; the influence of climatic variability and extreme episodic events on local environments and human settlement patterns; and the establishment and development of human exchange and trade networks and how they have affected the range of resources available for human exploitation, from agricultural domesticates to the development of the Flemish sea fishery. These papers were presented at the first joint meeting of the Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA) and the North Atlantic Bio-cultural Organisation (NABO), which was held at Glasgow University in March 2001.

Catalogues

The new Book News is now available and will be posted out on the 6th December. It's our biggest ever, with more pages and books than we've had before. Because it's Christmas it's full of suggestions for stocking fillers and it also has an extra special list of Bargains and Good Deals. For a limited time only we have drastically cut the prices of many of our own Oxbow publications, particularly archaeological and classical biographies as well as Festschrifts that celebrate the work of some leading figures in archaeology, history and the Classics.

Winter 2004

Conferences we will be attending

TAG: Theoretical Archaeology Group
Glasgow (Friday 17 December, 2004 - Sunday 19 December, 2004)
TAG 2004 will take place on the Gilmorehill Campus of the University of Glasgow, situated in the West End of Glasgow. All academic sessions will be convened in the Boyd Orr Building. Both the whisky reception and the TAG ceilidh are also held on campus, in the Hunterian Museum and the Queen Margaret Union respectively. The civic reception will be hosted by Glasgow City Council in the City Chambers on George Square in the city centre. http://www.gla.ac.uk/archaeology/tag/