To ritualise, or not to ritualise, that is the question.

When is it ever safe to call something ‘ritual’ and when is it best to sit on the fence and be non-committal? Why do people assume that archaeologists label things as ritual only when there is no rational explanation for them? Why do we assume that anything said to be ritual has to be of religious or spiritual significance? Why doesn’t somebody answer these questions?

“Crown and Veil” or Female religiosity on display.

David Brown takes a look at a German exhibition that focuses on female monastic life in the Middle Ages.

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.

Meet the Author: Douglass Bailey

Douglass Bailey of Cardiff University gets a grilling from Michael Shanks (Stanford)about his new book Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic.

New Releases

The Clothed Body in the Ancient World
edited by Liza Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Paperback. GB £30.00

The recent renaissance of interest in the history of dress and its cultural importance is celebrated in this collection of interdisciplinary essays. The sixteen contributors present on-going research into the study of the clothed body in ancient Egypt and the Aegean, Classical Greece, Rome and Late Antiquity. Through literary and artistic evidence and film, they discuss how dress articulates and defines an individual within his or her given society, at the same time highlighting common themes in scholarship, methodological differences between disciplines and periods, as well as contrasting definitions of what constitutes the clothed body.
Essays discussing Aegean Bronze Age fashions, costume design in filmed biblical epics, clothing in Aristophanic comedy, Greek and Roman female undergarments, the symbolism of the Roman toga, and the spectacle of images of Byzantine dress, are just some of the diverse subjects covered in this study.

Alban's Buried Town
Niblett, Rosalind
Hardback. GB £40.00, GB £10.00

St Albans has a long tradition of archaeological investigation dating back to the 18th century. What has been lacking however, is a detailed synthesis and interpretation of the accumulated information. This book is intended to meet that need, and comes out of a project set up by English Heritage in 1992 designed to promote 'intensive' urban archaeological strategy. This volume is a critical assessment of the current archaeological information from an area of 12 square kilometers centred on medieval and modern St Albans and its Roman predecessor, Verulamium.

Northern Archaeological Textiles: NESAT VII: Textile Symposium in Edinburgh, 5th-7th May 1999
Edited by Frances Pritchard and John Peter Wild
Hardback. GB £30.00

This volume presents the papers from the seventh North-European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles (NESAT), held in Edinburgh in 1999. The themes covered demonstrate a variety of scholarship that will encourage anyone working in this important and stimulating area of archaeology. From the golden robes of a Roman burial, to the fashionable Viking in Denmark, through to the early modern period and more technological aspects of textile-research, these twenty-four papers (five of which are in German) provide a wealth of new information on the study of ancient textiles in northern Europe.

A Norse Farmstead in the Outer Hebrides: Excavations at Mound 3, Bornais, South Uist
by Niall Sharples
Hardback. GB £30.00, GB £10.00

South Uist is a small island in the soutern half of the Outer Hebrides. In the middle of the island lies the township of Bornais. This covers a particularly flat area of land which means that the three prominent mounds can be seen all the more clearly. These mounds have been identified as being from the Viking period, with evidence of pre-Viking habitation at the site coming from Iron Age sherds. The excavation of the Bornais settlement is a long-term project, which has been going since 1994. This first published volume of the results of the excavation focuses on Mound 3, but includes a discussion of the topographic and geophysical survey of all the mounds. There is also considerable analysis of the environmental remains and radiocarbon dating.

Environmental Archaeology 10, part 1
edited by Glynis Jones
Paperback. GB £24.00, GB £2.00

Contents of this issue include: Prehistoric Use of Ringed Seals: A Zooarchaeological Study from Arctic Canada (Maribeth Suzanne Murray); Sub-Local Differences in Late Holocene Land Use at Orstad, Jæren in SW Norway, revealed by Soil Pollen Stratigraphy (Barbara M. Sageidet); Decadal-scale sea ice changes in the Canadian Arctic and their impacts on humans during the past 4,000 years (Peta J. Mudie, Andre Rochon and Elisabeth Levac); Wild and Cultivated Vegetables, Herbs and Spices in Greek Antiquity (900 B.C. to 400 B.C.) (Fragkiska Megaloudi); Contamination or in situ Deposition? (Vanessa Gelorini and Jean Bourgeois); Reviews.

AND FINALLY... Not one of our own new releases, but co-authored by Oxbow's very own Kate Atherton:-

Barentin's Manor: Excavations of the moated manor at Hardings Field, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire 1976-9
by Philip Page, Kate Atherton and Alan Hardy
Hardback. GB £19.95

Archaeological investigations at Harding's Field, Chalgrove, revealed the remains of one of the most complete examples of a moated medieval manor yet excavated in England. Evidence of a pre-moat occupation dating from the first half of the 13th century, which may not have been seigneurial, was succeeded in the mid 13th century by the construction of the moated manor house. The documentary evidence indicates that this house belonged to the Barentins, a prominent Oxfordshire family. The manor underwent considerable alterations and improvements during the following 200 years, particularly during the early part of the 14th century and, to a lesser extent, in the late 14th and early 15th century. It passed out of the hands of the Barentin family shortly before it was demolished in the late 15th century.