Who ate all the pride? Patriotic sentiment and English national football support

ABSTRACT. The growing popularity of English national insignia in international football tournaments has been widely interpreted as evidence of the emergence of a renewed English national consciousness. However, little empirical research has considered how people in England actually understand football support in relation to national identity. Interview data collected around the time of the Euro 2000 and the 2002 World Cup tournaments fail to substantiate the presumption that support for the England football team maps onto claims to patriotic sentiment in any straightforward way. People with far‐right political affiliations did generally use national football support to symbolise a general pride in English national identity. However, other people either claimed not to support the England national team precisely because of its associations with nationalism, or else bracketed the domain of football support from more general connotations of English patriotism.     

BLACKSMITHING TECHNOLOGY IN IRON AGE WESSEX

Summary. The sophistication of Iron Age blacksmithing technology in Wessex was determined by the metallurgical examination of 503 iron artefacts using Optical Metallography, Electron Microprobe Analysis and Vickers Hardness Testing. Iron artefacts from the different regions and site types of Southern Britain were examined to determine both the capabilities of Iron Age blacksmiths to alter the properties of iron artefacts through cold-working, carburization, heat-treatment and alloy selection, and the distribution of these possible techniques. The reasons for the selection of the areas, the sites, and the actual artefacts chosen for examination are discussed.     

HOUSE URNS AND ETRUSCAN TOMB PAINTING: TRADITION VERSUS INNOVATION IN THE NINTH–SEVENTH CENTURIES BC

Summary.   The first painted tombs in Etruria date to about 675–650 BC, as attested by a few examples at Veii and Caere, which pre-date those of Tarquinia (mainly sixth–third centuries BC). At first glance, tomb painting has no obvious connection with the Early Iron Age or Villanovan period (tenth/ninth–eighth centuries BC), when burial in shaft or trench graves predominated. Nevertheless, some links can be suggested with Villanovan house urns, which reinforce the point that indigenous traditions merit greater consideration than is usual in discussions of Etruscan artistic and cultural development.     

AN INVESTIGATION INTO DIET AT THE SITE OF YARNTON, OXFORDSHIRE, USING STABLE CARBON AND NITROGEN ISOTOPES

This paper reports the results of stable isotopic analyses conducted upon animal and human bones recovered from Yarnton, Oxfordshire. Spanning the Neolithic to Saxon periods, it is in many ways a typical site, but is unusual in that a small Middle Iron Age cemetery was discovered.
All of the data presented here lie within the expected isotopic ranges for the European Holocene, although both faunal and animal δ¹⁵N values are higher than is commonly found. The faunal data show the expected pattern for the animals studied (horse, cattle, sheep/goat, pig and dog), with pigs being more omnivorous than ruminants, and dogs eating an isotopically similar diet to humans. The animals' diets had higher δ¹⁵N values during the Roman period as compared to the Iron Age, although it is unclear if this reflects an environmental change or alteration in animal management practices. Despite the site's riverine location, there is no isotopic evidence for fish consumption. No distinctions were found based on gender or burial position within the Iron Age cemetery. Age-based distinctions were found in δ¹³C values, although these cannot be fully explained. As expected, infants have a higher nitrogen isotopic value than other individuals, reflecting the consumption of their mother's milk.