Qin Sihuangdi – The First Emperor of China

The arrival of several Terracotta warriors in the UK for a major exhibition has prompted a number of publications on Qin Sihuangdi, the first emperor of China. We take a look...

More Damaged Books

Anyone would think we were dropping them on purpose! It's time to find homes for more slightly folorn looking books.

New Bargains

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.

New Releases

Augustine: De Civitate Dei Books III & IV~
edited with an introduction, translation and commentary by P G Walsh~
Paperback. GB £22.50
Hardback. GB £40.00, GB £9.95

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.

On the Margins of Southwest Asia: Cyprus during the 6th to 4th Millennia BC
by Joanne Clarke with contributions by Carole McCartney and Alexander Wasse
Hardback. GB £45.00, GB £14.95

This book examines social change in Cyprus during the 6th to 4th millennia BC; a period that is traditionally viewed as one of prolonged cultural continuity and isolation from the mainland. Through the documentation and integration of technological practice and up-to-date climatic, ecological and environmental data, it is proposed that many of the observable differences between mainland southwest Asia and Cyprus during this period are the result of divergent adaptive strategies in response to different environmental conditions, low population density and low resource stress. The book draws upon theories in ecological and evolutionary biology and adapts it to cultural change in general. By employing a holistic approach with a focus on technological practice the book seeks to show that cultural change on Cyprus is concomitant with broadly similar cultural trajectories taken in other regions on the margins of southwest Asia. The conclusion reached is that if all of the pressures that drove cultural change on the mainland were relaxed the result would be a stable hunter-gatherer economy with a bit of farming and herding: exactly what appears to be the case on Cyprus.

Journal of Wetland Archaeology 7 (2007)
edited by Bryony Coles
Paperback. GB £20.00, GB £5.00

Research papers:The Post-Roman Archaeology of the Somerset Moors based on peatland investigations on Godney Moor ( Rupert A Housley, Vanessa Straker, Frank M Chambers and Jonathan G A Lageard); New Interpretations of Settlement Remains in Lake Valgjärv of Koorküla, Estonia (Maili Roio); Pile dwellings, drainage and deposition: preliminary soil micromorphology study of cultural deposits from underwater sites at Lake Luokesas, Molatai Region, Lithuania (Helen Lewis); Environmental Monitoring at the Lusatian Culture Settlement in Biskupin, Poland (Leszek Babioski et al); Putative Ritual Deposition of Neolithic Stone Axes in a Wetland Context in Cumbria: Refining the narrative using beetle remains (Stephen R. Davis, David M. Wilkinson and Tom Clare); Review articles: Digging the Dutch Mountains: Recent work by Leendert Louwe Kooijmans (Robert van de Noort); The Haddenham Project (Alasdair Whittle); Short notes: Excavations at Wygate park, Lincolnshire (Michael Wood); A new site on the Pacific North West coast ( Dale Croes)

Plants, People and Places: Recent Studies in Phytolithic Analysis
edited by Marco Madella and Débora Zurro

Phytoliths - rigid microscopic bodies that occur in most plant species - have gone a long way since that day when Darwin became curious about a fine powder deposited on the instruments of the HMS Beagle. This fascinating subject started because of curiosity, and in that respect it was a good start since curiosity is probably the most important drive behind first-rate research. Fortunately curiosity is still present in phytolith research; the articles in this book are full of curiosity and ingenuity. Phytolith research has grown since the times of Darwin and in the last three decades has bloomed. The papers in this collection span most of the application of phytolith analysis (from archaeology, palaeoenvironmental studies and botany, to name just some) and the majority of them were presented at the 4th International Meeting on Phytolith Research that was held in Cambridge (UK) in August 2002.

West Country Farms: House-and-Estate Surveys, 1598-1764
by Nat Alcock and Cary Carson
Hardback. GB £35.00, GB £14.95

This major innovative study is centred on a type of document that has hitherto been almost unknown to scholars. It explores the significance of a unique source, the 'house-and-estate' survey - which adds detail of the village's houses, outhouses, and farm buildings to the standard evidence of an estate survey. These surveys are explored for South-West England for the period from the end of the 16th to the mid-18th centuries. The first part of the book examines the twenty West Country communities for which such surveys survive, using these documents to paint landscapes of individual farming communities caught at one moment in time - pictures that come as close as written records can to the complete archaeological excavation of village sites. It examines (a) The communities and their social structure, including land-holdings and demographic evidence. (b) The houses, covering construction and plan (including evidence from standing buildings); rooms and their use, and the pattern of housing revealed in the surveys. (c) The farmsteads, covering the buildings of the farmsteads (examining both standing buildings and documentary sources), the relationship of the farms to the regional economies, and the discovery of economic opportunities and contrasts between neighbours (an innovative study based on comparisons drawn from the survey evidence). The second part of the book considers each of the villages and their farms in detail. Each chapter introduces the place and its individual features, discusses the character of the houses, of the farmsteads and the farming economy as revealed in the surveys. This is followed by an abstract of the detailed information in the corresponding survey. The book includes an index including the many hundred West-country individuals named in the surveys, that will be of value to anyone working on the region.

Dungeness and Romney Marsh: Barrier Dynamics and Marshland Evolution
edited by Anthony J Long, Martyn P Waller and Andrew J Plater
Hardback. GB £30.00, GB £10.00

The Romney Marsh / Dungeness Foreland depositional complex comprises an extensive tract of marshland and associated sand and gravel barrier deposits, located in the eastern English Channel. This monograph presents the results of a programme of palaeoenvironmental investigation aimed at improving our understanding of this internationally-significant coastal landform. The focus is on the evidence for landscape change during the late Holocene, from c. 3000 BC onwards, and on identifying the local, regional and global driving mechanisms responsible for the changes observed. The research details the results from two related projects, each funded as part of English Heritage's Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund scheme. The first project concerns the late Holocene evolution of the port of Rye, located in the southeast part of the complex, and the second the depositional history of the gravel foreland. Topics explored include the vegetation and land-use history of the study area, methodological issues relating to the collection and interpretation of radiocarbon dates from coastal lowlands, the role of compaction in influencing landscape and sea-level change, and the effects of medieval storms on coastal flooding and landscape change. This monograph is intended for students and researchers interested in Holocene coastal evolution and sea-level change, coastal vegetation history and land-use history, and the development of new techniques for reconstructing past environmental change in coastal lowlands.