Casemate catalog SPRING 2017(8)_Layout 1 06/10/2016 21:11 Page 48
Oxbow Books AMERIC AN LANDSC APES
Battlespace 1865 Archaeology and the Landscapes, Strategies, and Tactics of the North Platte Campaign, Nebraska Douglas D. Scott, Peter Bleed and Amanda Renner $34.99 / 144 pages / b&w and color illustrations / November 2016 / paperback / 978-1-78570-339-3
For a period of about week in February 1865, as the Civil War was winding down and Plains Indian communities were reeling in the wake of the Sand Creek massacre, combat swept across the Nebraska panhandle, especially along the Platte River. The fighting that marked this event barely compares to the massive campaigns and terrible carnage that marked the conflict that was taking place in the eastern states but it was a significant event at the opening on the ensuing Indian Wars. Operating on terrain they knew well, Cheyenne warriors and other Native forces encountered the US Cavalry who operated within a modern network of long distance migration and pony express trails and military stations. The North Platte Campaign offers a good basis for the application of landscape approaches to conflict archaeology if only because of its scale. This study draws on techniques of battlefield archaeology, focusing on the concept of ‘battlespace’ and the recovery, distribution and analysis of artifacts and weaponry, as well as historical accounts of the participants, LiDAR-informed terrain assessment, and theoretical consideration of the strategic thinking of the combatants. It applies a landscape approach to the archaeological study of war and reveals an overlooked phase of the American Civil War and the opening of the Indian Wars.
Ancient Historiography on War and Empire Timothy Howe, Sabine Müller and Richard Stoneman $75.00 / 304 pages / b&w and color illustrations / March 2017 / hardback / 978-1-78570-299-0
In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the political interests and behaviors of the present. Ancient Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the literary genre of writing history developed to guide empires through their wars. Taking key events from the Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Macedonian and Roman ‘empires’, the 17 essays collected here analyze the way events and the accounts of those events interact. Subjects include: how Greek historians assign divine honors to the Persian King; the role of the tomb cult of Cyrus the Founder in historical; warfare and financial innovation in the age of Philip II, Alexander the Great; the murders of Philip II; Alexander the Great’s combat use of eagle symbolism; Plutarch’s juxtaposition of character in the Alexander-Caesar pairing, and Roman Imperial historians using historical examples of good and bad rule to make meaningful challenges to current Roman authority. Timothy Howe is Professor of History and Ancient Studies at St Olaf College (USA). Sabine Müller is Professor of Ancient History at Marburg University (Germany) where she specializes in ancient Near East, Greece, Macedonia and Rome. Richard Stoneman is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter (UK) with particular research interest in the Greek world and Greek tradition.
The Army of the Roman Republic The Second Century BC, Polybius and the Camps at Numantia, Spain Mike Dobson $59.99 / 436 pages / 292 illustrations / November 2016 / paperback / 978-1-78570-398-0
The main source of archaeological evidence for Late Roman Republican camps is a complex of installations around the Iberian city of Numantia in Spain, excavated by Adolf Schulten in the early 1900s. This book reassesses Schulten and concludes that much of his interpretation is questionable. Radically different alternative reconstructions making use of recent fieldwork are presented for several of the sites. A discussion of dating evidence leads to alternative dates being offered for some of the camps. To aid interpreting the sites, army organization and art of encampment for the period of the Numantine Wars is discussed. This study gives added importance to the sites at Numantia, for they not only form the main source of archaeological evidence for Late Republican camps, but provide evidence for the form of camp for both the late manipular army and the early cohort one.
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