Reflexivity or orientation? Collective memories in the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national press

With regard to the notion of ‘national reflexivity’, an important part of Beck’s cosmopolitan outlook, this article examines how, and, in what ways, collective memories of empire were reflexively used in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national newspaper coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Games. In contrast to Beck, it is argued that examples of national reflexivity were closely tied to the history of the nation-state, with collective memories of the former British Empire used to debate, critique and appraise ‘the nation’. These memories were discursively used to ‘orientate’ each nation’s postcolonial emergence, suggesting that examples of national reflexivity, within the press’ coverage, remained closely tied to the ‘historical fetishes’ enveloped in each nations’ imperial past(s). This implies that the ‘national outlook’ does not objectively overlook, uncritically absorb or reflexively acknowledge differences with ‘the other’, but instead, negotiates a historically grounded and selective appraisal of the past that reveals a contingent and, at times, ambivalent, interplay with ‘the global’

Excavation of an Iron Age and Romano-British enclosure at Woodend Farm, Johnstonebridge, Annandalw, 1994 and 1997

Excavations were undertaken at a multi-vallate enclosure on Woodend Farm by GUARD in the latesummer of 1994 in advance of the construction of the M6 motorway extension. Geophysical surveyand excavation revealed a third bank beyond the two upstanding banks. Within the interior, sevenseparate blocks of superimposed buildings were observed, together with an eighth, single-phasestructure interpreted as an animal pen. Artefacts were few, consisting of worked stones and querns,while the radiocarbon dates indicated occupation substantially in the Romano-British period,although the enclosure was built in the pre-Roman Iron Age. A return was made to Woodend in 1997during the topsoil operations for the construction work and three further structures were recorded

Bronze age cremations, Iron Age and Roman settlement and early Medieval inhumations at the Langeled receiving facilities, Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire

Excavations to the north of the village of Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire identified a funerary landscape of Late Bronze Age, Later Iron Age and Roman cremations, as well as Roman and early medieval inhumations. The four early medieval burials included a spearhead, knives, buckles and beads. Occupation activity associated with the Bronze Age and early medieval burials was not identified, but a 'ladder-style' settlement of trackways and enclosures was established by the first century BC. This settlement underwent at least two episodes of restructuring before its abandonment, probably in the third century AD. Given a dearth of imported objects and the preservation of pre-Conquest-style building traditions, the inhabitants of the final settlement chose not to adopt the trappings of a 'Romanised' lifestyle