Oxbow spring sale!
Mar. 8th, 2015 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parlstickareThe Oxbow spring sale catalogue came to work last week, and as usual there are lots of interesting books in it. Such as these:
- Brisbane et al., 2012. The archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in context (£20)
Novgorod is one of the most intensively and continuously studied urban sites in northern Europe. The excellent preservation of organic and inorganic material in its anaerobic soils, including the structural remains of streets, properties and buildings, has made it possible to study entire quarters of the town as well as the activities of its inhabitants. With deposits up to 8 m deep in places and with well-dated sequences from the early to mid-10th century, its importance to the study of both medieval Russia and the development of Europe cannot be over emphasised. The Archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in Context includes papers on aspects of the environmental and technological context of the relationship between urban centre and rural hinterland. It begins by examining the environmental context for the settlement pattern that developed from the 9th to 15th centuries and examining the role that various natural resources had in contributing to that pattern. Where possible, it also attempts to explain the processes by which these resources were produced as commodities (via craft production, centralised workshops, household production, specialised settlements, etc.) and place the evidence from the three other volumes on ceramics, wood use and zooarchaeology into a wider context, concentrating on the exploitation, manufacture and consumption of these and other materials. Whilst not definitive, the collection aims to be a starting point for attempting to put Novgorod into a wider context of the medieval world.
- Serjeantson, 2009 Birds (£10)
This book serves as a guide to the methods of study of bird remains from the past and covers a wide range of topics, including anatomy and osteology, taphonomy, eggs, feathers, and bone tools. It examines the myriad ways in which people have interacted with birds in the past. The volume also includes discussion on the consumption of wild birds, the domestication of birds, cockfighting and falconry, birds in ritual and religion, and the role of birds in ecological reconstruction, providing an up-to-date survey of current knowledge on these topics.
- Clevis, 2009 Medieval material culture (£10)
A range of articles on Medieval material from the Netherlands complementing a similar Roman collection: leather sheaths, a leather case with waxed tablets, toys, belt mounts, linen smoothers, book clasps, kitchen equipment, pottery and industrial waste, architectural stonework. All in English; well illustrated.
- Cook, 2004 Early Anglo-Saxon buckets. A corpus of allow and iron-bound, stave-built vessels (£10)
Anglo-Saxon buckets are frequent finds in 5th- to 7th-century Anglo-Saxon graves. They are constructed of wooden staves and copper-alloy or iron bindings; some of them are no more than mug-sized, others 20 cm or more in diameter. Elaborate decorative elements on some buckets and many of the grave contexts suggest that these buckets were status goods rather than every-day household equipment. Jean Mary Cook began collecting information on Anglo-Saxon buckets in the 1950s. This posthumously published corpus comprises 339 entries on complete buckets, bucket mounts and objects erroneously published as buckets, many of them based on first-hand examination, with information on their archaeological context. The detailed information in the illustrated monograph is accompanied by a website that enables the reader to search Jean Cooks database for certain aspects of bucket construction and design.
- Nosch, 2011Wearing the cloak. Dressing the soldier in Roman times (£10)
Wearing the Cloak contains nine stimulating chapters on Roman military textiles and equipment that take textile research to a new level. Hear the sounds of the Roman soldiers' clacking belts and get a view on their purchase orders with Egyptian weavers. Could armour be built of linen? Who had access to what kinds of prestigious equipment? And what garments and weapons were deposited in bogs at the edge of the Roman Empire? The authors draw upon multiple sources such as original textual and scriptural evidence, ancient works of art and iconography and archaeological records and finds. The chapters cover - as did the Roman army - a large geographical span: Egypt, the Levant, the Etruscan heartland and Northern Europe. Status, prestige and access are viewed in the light of financial and social capacities and help shed new light on the material realities of a soldier's life in the Roman world.
- Netherton and Owen-Crocker, 2009 Medieval clothing and textiles 5 (£13)
The fifth volume of this annual series features several articles examining the interaction of medieval romance with textiles and clothing. French Gothic ivory carvings illustrating courtly romances reveal details of fashionable dress; the distinct languages of narrative poetry and Parisian tax records offer contrasting views of medieval embroiderers; and scenes from the Tristan legend provide clues to the original form of the earliest surviving decorative quilt. Other papers look at ecclesiastical attempts to restrict extravagance in secular women's dress, the use of clothing references to signal impending conflict in Icelandic sagas, the development and possible construction of the Tudor-era court headdress called the French hood, and the way Cesare Vecellio drew on both existing artwork and the Venetian image to present historical dress in his sixteenth-century treatise on costume. Also included are reviews of recent books on clothing and textiles.
- Tanis, 2001 Leaves of gold. Manuscript illuminations from Philadelphia Collections (£13)
This beautifully produced exhibition catalogue showcases 80 of the finest illuminated manuscripts held in libraries in the Philadelphia area. They span the period 1200-1600 and include examples of a wide range of religious and secular manuscripts, with most of the major centres of illumination represented. Introductory essays provide context on the production and use, and the individual manuscripts are described and discussed.
- Cowen, 2008 English stained glass (£8)
This album of medieval (c.1100-1530) stained glass in England's churches is among the finest to be found. A geographical sweep of the nation takes in over 100 windows along with short descriptions, from the greatest Cathedrals to isolated examples in out of the way parish churches.
- Kane, 2010. The Troyes Memoire. The making of a Medieval tapestry (£15)
The "Troyes Mémoire", a late fifteenth-century manuscript preserved in the archives of the town of Troyes, France, is the sole surviving example of the written instructions used in designing tapestries during the Middle Ages. It is unique in its presentation of detailed information on how patrons and church officials communicated complex iconographic material to the medieval artists commissioned to paint cartoons for tapestries. It is here translated into English for the first time, with full introduction and extensive notes. The volume also includes a translation of another richly informative document from medieval Troyes: the Account Books of the Church of Sainte-Madeleine, which introduces us to the actual people who worked together, between 1416 and 1430, to produce a set of tapestries for the town's oldest church.
- Vestergard Pedersen and Nosch, 2009 The Medieval broadcloth. Changing trends in fashion, manufacturing and consumption (£8)
The eight papers presented here provide a useful introduction to medieval broadcloth, and an up-to-date synthesis of current research. The word broadcloth is nowadays used as an overall term for the woven textiles mass-produced and exported all over Europe. It was first produced in Flanders as a luxurious cloth from the 11th century and throughout the medieval period. As the concept of broadcloth has deriving from the written sources it cannot directly be identified in the archaeological textiles and therefore the topic of medieval broadcloth is very suitable as an interdisciplinary theme. The first chapter (John Munro) presents an introduction to the subject and takes the reader through the manufacturing and economic importance of the medieval broadcloth as a luxury item. Chapter two (Carsten Jahnke) describes trade in the Baltic Sea area, detailing production standards, shipping and prices. Chapters three, four and five (Heini Kirjavainen, Riina Rammo and Jerzy Maik) deal with archaeological textiles excavated in the Baltic, Finland and Poland. Chapters six and seven (Camilla Luise Dahl and Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen) concern the problems of combining the terminology from the written sources with archaeological textiles. The last chapter reports on an ongoing reconstruction project; at the open air museum in Eindhoven, Holland, Anton Reurink has tried to recreate a medieval broadcloth based on written and historical sources. During the last few years he has reconstructed the tool for preparing and spinning wool, and a group of spinners has produced a yarn of the right quality. He subsequently wove approximately 20 metres of cloth and conducted the first experiment with foot-fulling.
- Brisbane et al., 2012. The archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in context (£20)
Novgorod is one of the most intensively and continuously studied urban sites in northern Europe. The excellent preservation of organic and inorganic material in its anaerobic soils, including the structural remains of streets, properties and buildings, has made it possible to study entire quarters of the town as well as the activities of its inhabitants. With deposits up to 8 m deep in places and with well-dated sequences from the early to mid-10th century, its importance to the study of both medieval Russia and the development of Europe cannot be over emphasised. The Archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in Context includes papers on aspects of the environmental and technological context of the relationship between urban centre and rural hinterland. It begins by examining the environmental context for the settlement pattern that developed from the 9th to 15th centuries and examining the role that various natural resources had in contributing to that pattern. Where possible, it also attempts to explain the processes by which these resources were produced as commodities (via craft production, centralised workshops, household production, specialised settlements, etc.) and place the evidence from the three other volumes on ceramics, wood use and zooarchaeology into a wider context, concentrating on the exploitation, manufacture and consumption of these and other materials. Whilst not definitive, the collection aims to be a starting point for attempting to put Novgorod into a wider context of the medieval world.
- Serjeantson, 2009 Birds (£10)
This book serves as a guide to the methods of study of bird remains from the past and covers a wide range of topics, including anatomy and osteology, taphonomy, eggs, feathers, and bone tools. It examines the myriad ways in which people have interacted with birds in the past. The volume also includes discussion on the consumption of wild birds, the domestication of birds, cockfighting and falconry, birds in ritual and religion, and the role of birds in ecological reconstruction, providing an up-to-date survey of current knowledge on these topics.
- Clevis, 2009 Medieval material culture (£10)
A range of articles on Medieval material from the Netherlands complementing a similar Roman collection: leather sheaths, a leather case with waxed tablets, toys, belt mounts, linen smoothers, book clasps, kitchen equipment, pottery and industrial waste, architectural stonework. All in English; well illustrated.
- Cook, 2004 Early Anglo-Saxon buckets. A corpus of allow and iron-bound, stave-built vessels (£10)
Anglo-Saxon buckets are frequent finds in 5th- to 7th-century Anglo-Saxon graves. They are constructed of wooden staves and copper-alloy or iron bindings; some of them are no more than mug-sized, others 20 cm or more in diameter. Elaborate decorative elements on some buckets and many of the grave contexts suggest that these buckets were status goods rather than every-day household equipment. Jean Mary Cook began collecting information on Anglo-Saxon buckets in the 1950s. This posthumously published corpus comprises 339 entries on complete buckets, bucket mounts and objects erroneously published as buckets, many of them based on first-hand examination, with information on their archaeological context. The detailed information in the illustrated monograph is accompanied by a website that enables the reader to search Jean Cooks database for certain aspects of bucket construction and design.
- Nosch, 2011Wearing the cloak. Dressing the soldier in Roman times (£10)
Wearing the Cloak contains nine stimulating chapters on Roman military textiles and equipment that take textile research to a new level. Hear the sounds of the Roman soldiers' clacking belts and get a view on their purchase orders with Egyptian weavers. Could armour be built of linen? Who had access to what kinds of prestigious equipment? And what garments and weapons were deposited in bogs at the edge of the Roman Empire? The authors draw upon multiple sources such as original textual and scriptural evidence, ancient works of art and iconography and archaeological records and finds. The chapters cover - as did the Roman army - a large geographical span: Egypt, the Levant, the Etruscan heartland and Northern Europe. Status, prestige and access are viewed in the light of financial and social capacities and help shed new light on the material realities of a soldier's life in the Roman world.
- Netherton and Owen-Crocker, 2009 Medieval clothing and textiles 5 (£13)
The fifth volume of this annual series features several articles examining the interaction of medieval romance with textiles and clothing. French Gothic ivory carvings illustrating courtly romances reveal details of fashionable dress; the distinct languages of narrative poetry and Parisian tax records offer contrasting views of medieval embroiderers; and scenes from the Tristan legend provide clues to the original form of the earliest surviving decorative quilt. Other papers look at ecclesiastical attempts to restrict extravagance in secular women's dress, the use of clothing references to signal impending conflict in Icelandic sagas, the development and possible construction of the Tudor-era court headdress called the French hood, and the way Cesare Vecellio drew on both existing artwork and the Venetian image to present historical dress in his sixteenth-century treatise on costume. Also included are reviews of recent books on clothing and textiles.
- Tanis, 2001 Leaves of gold. Manuscript illuminations from Philadelphia Collections (£13)
This beautifully produced exhibition catalogue showcases 80 of the finest illuminated manuscripts held in libraries in the Philadelphia area. They span the period 1200-1600 and include examples of a wide range of religious and secular manuscripts, with most of the major centres of illumination represented. Introductory essays provide context on the production and use, and the individual manuscripts are described and discussed.
- Cowen, 2008 English stained glass (£8)
This album of medieval (c.1100-1530) stained glass in England's churches is among the finest to be found. A geographical sweep of the nation takes in over 100 windows along with short descriptions, from the greatest Cathedrals to isolated examples in out of the way parish churches.
- Kane, 2010. The Troyes Memoire. The making of a Medieval tapestry (£15)
The "Troyes Mémoire", a late fifteenth-century manuscript preserved in the archives of the town of Troyes, France, is the sole surviving example of the written instructions used in designing tapestries during the Middle Ages. It is unique in its presentation of detailed information on how patrons and church officials communicated complex iconographic material to the medieval artists commissioned to paint cartoons for tapestries. It is here translated into English for the first time, with full introduction and extensive notes. The volume also includes a translation of another richly informative document from medieval Troyes: the Account Books of the Church of Sainte-Madeleine, which introduces us to the actual people who worked together, between 1416 and 1430, to produce a set of tapestries for the town's oldest church.
- Vestergard Pedersen and Nosch, 2009 The Medieval broadcloth. Changing trends in fashion, manufacturing and consumption (£8)
The eight papers presented here provide a useful introduction to medieval broadcloth, and an up-to-date synthesis of current research. The word broadcloth is nowadays used as an overall term for the woven textiles mass-produced and exported all over Europe. It was first produced in Flanders as a luxurious cloth from the 11th century and throughout the medieval period. As the concept of broadcloth has deriving from the written sources it cannot directly be identified in the archaeological textiles and therefore the topic of medieval broadcloth is very suitable as an interdisciplinary theme. The first chapter (John Munro) presents an introduction to the subject and takes the reader through the manufacturing and economic importance of the medieval broadcloth as a luxury item. Chapter two (Carsten Jahnke) describes trade in the Baltic Sea area, detailing production standards, shipping and prices. Chapters three, four and five (Heini Kirjavainen, Riina Rammo and Jerzy Maik) deal with archaeological textiles excavated in the Baltic, Finland and Poland. Chapters six and seven (Camilla Luise Dahl and Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen) concern the problems of combining the terminology from the written sources with archaeological textiles. The last chapter reports on an ongoing reconstruction project; at the open air museum in Eindhoven, Holland, Anton Reurink has tried to recreate a medieval broadcloth based on written and historical sources. During the last few years he has reconstructed the tool for preparing and spinning wool, and a group of spinners has produced a yarn of the right quality. He subsequently wove approximately 20 metres of cloth and conducted the first experiment with foot-fulling.
