Pottery托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Pottery托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

一、Pottery托福听力原文：

NARRATOR:Listen to part of a lecture in an archaeology class.

FEMALE PROFESSOR:So,if I ask you what most archaeologists do with all those pieces of broken pottery they find at excavation sites,you'd probably say that they help establish the time period of the site.Pretty obvious,huh?Pottery helps us order things in time—to,uh,assign relative dates.Basically,when we date pottery,we look at its frequency at a given site.

As you can probably surmise,styles of pottery vary over time,in terms of how they're made,what they're made of,and what they were used for.So as archaeologists,we build up a picture—a sequence—of how pottery changed over time—as well as how its popularity varied over time,which we can tell by the frequency of a style at a site—how many occurrences we find at a given site.But pottery can provide evidence about a lot of things,not just dating evidence,uh,not just evidence of the time period the pottery was created.So,there's also another type of evidence that we call distributional evidence.OK,pottery is evidence of distribution,it—pottery—provides evidence that trade took place.Pots were traded for themselves,or,or given as gifts,but even more often they changed hands‘cause they were used as containers for food or wine.

To fully understand how pottery is used as distributional evidence,we have to know its origin,where it was made.So how do we figure this out?Well,by studying what the pottery is made of.You look at the material that's,that a pot's made of to know where it was made,and its distribution.

OK,a third kind of evidence is evidence of function,the function of the site where the pottery was found,and sometimes about the lives of the people who lived there.Now,now this evidence is,is a bit tougher to interpret than the other two.And there are several reasons for this.

First of all,pottery is usually not found in primary contexts—that is,it's often not found in the place where it was used.Think about your average town dump—you know,the place where everyone's unwanted stuff ends up.Can you imagine archaeologists a thousand years from now digging up a town dump and then using the items found there to get meaningful information about how the objects found there were used?Probably not.

A second reason why function is harder to identify is that not all objects found in one spot can be assumed to have identical functions,even if they look similar.If you come across a collection of pots at a site,you need to work at the level of the group rather than the individual pots,because you can't assume that they all have the same function just because they were found in the same place.So this is where pottery's form comes into play.

The form of a pot can give us some ideas about its function,uh,the suitability of the pottery to serve a specific function.However,we have to be careful when it comes to skeuomorphs.These objects are copies of the designs of other objects,but in another material.And this can be problematic,because sometimes the new or different material is not well-suited to the design.

A good example of this comes from fifteenth-century Dutch ceramics:a bronze cauldron was copied in ceramic,including these sort of big,angled handles.And while it worked well in bronze,it didn't work in the ceramic skeuomorph…well,uh,because the ceramic handles couldn't support the weight of the pot when it's full—it,it just couldn't function as it was intended to.

二、Pottery托福听力中文翻译：

旁白：在考古学课上听一节课的一部分。

女教授：所以，如果我问你，大多数考古学家是如何处理他们在挖掘现场发现的所有陶器碎片的，你可能会说他们帮助确定了遗址的时间段。很明显吧？陶器帮助我们及时订购物品，呃，确定相关日期。基本上，当我们对陶器进行年代测定时，我们会查看其在特定地点的频率。

正如你可能猜测的那样，陶器的风格随着时间的推移而变化，包括它们的制作方式、材料和用途。因此，作为考古学家，我们构建了一幅图画——一幅关于陶器如何随时间变化以及其流行程度如何随时间变化的序列，我们可以通过一个地点的风格频率来判断我们在一个特定地点发现了多少陶器。但是陶器可以提供很多东西的证据，不仅仅是年代证据，呃，不仅仅是陶器制作时间的证据。所以，还有另一种类型的证据，我们称之为分配证据。好的，陶器是分布的证据，它提供了贸易发生的证据。罐子被自己交易，或作为礼物赠送，但更频繁的是它们易手，因为它们被用作食物或葡萄酒的容器。

为了充分了解陶器是如何被用作分布证据的，我们必须知道它的起源，它是在哪里制作的。那么我们该如何解决这个问题呢？嗯，通过研究陶器是由什么制成的。你看一看壶的材料，它是由什么材料制成的，它是在哪里制造的，它的分布。

好的，第三种证据是功能证据，是发现陶器的地点的功能，有时是关于生活在那里的人们的生活。现在，这个证据比另外两个更难解释。这有几个原因。

首先，陶器通常不存在于原始环境中，也就是说，它通常不存在于使用它的地方。想想你所在的城镇的垃圾场，每个人都不想要的东西都会在那里结束。你能想象考古学家从现在起一千年后挖掘出一个城镇垃圾场，然后利用在那里发现的物品获取关于那里发现的物品是如何被使用的有意义的信息吗？可能不会。

功能难以识别的第二个原因是，不能假设在一个点上找到的所有对象都具有相同的功能，即使它们看起来相似。如果你在一个站点上遇到一组pot，你需要在组的层次上工作，而不是在单个pot上工作，因为你不能仅仅因为它们被发现在同一个地方就假设它们都具有相同的功能。所以这就是陶器的形式发挥作用的地方。

壶的形状可以让我们了解它的功能，呃，陶器是否适合发挥特定的功能。然而，当涉及到skeuorphs时，我们必须小心。这些对象是其他对象设计的副本，但在另一种材质中。这可能会有问题，因为有时新的或不同的材料不太适合设计。

这方面的一个很好的例子来自十五世纪的荷兰陶瓷：一个青铜坩埚是用陶瓷复制的，包括这些大的、有角度的把手。虽然它在青铜中很好地工作，但在陶瓷skeuomorph中却不起作用……嗯，因为陶瓷手柄在装满时不能支撑锅的重量，所以它不能像预期的那样工作。

三、Pottery托福听力问题：

Q1:1.What is the lecture mainly about?

A.Changes over time in the functions of pottery

B.comparison of three types of pottery

C.Kinds of archaeological evidence that pottery provides

D.Improved techniques used for dating pottery

Q2:2.Why does the professor list several reasons that pots were traded?

A.To support her claim that pottery provides evidence of distribution

B.To clarify what she means when she uses the term"pottery"

C.To explain how archaeologists determine changes to pottery overtime

D.To indicate why certain pottery designs were more popular than others

Q3:3.According to the professor,what is one reason it is important to study the material from which pottery was made?

A.It can help archaeologists determine why some types of pottery have not been preserved.

B.It can help archaeologists establish where the pottery came from.

C.It can reveal how pottery-making techniques advanced from one period to the next.

D.It can provide evidence about the trade value of pottery.

Q4:4.According to the professor,why is it difficult to gain information on the function of a pot?[Click on two answers.]

A.Not all pots found in the same location have the same function.

B.Not all pots used to perform the same function look alike.

C.Pots are usually broken into many small pieces.

D.Pots are rarely found in the places in which they were used.

Q5:5.What is a skeuomorph?

A.An object with a similar function as another,but with a different design

B.A copy of an object,but made from a different material

C.An exact copy of an object made hundreds of years earlier

D.An object designed to have multiple functions

Q6:6.Why does the professor say this:

A.She expects that the students are already familiar with the point about how archaeologists use pottery.

B.She has described a problem that is easily solved by archaeologists.

C.She wants to know whether students believe it is easy to determine the time period of a site.

D.She is indicating that the assertion she just made about the function of pottery is,in fact,false.

四、Pottery托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：C

A2:正确答案：A

A3:正确答案：B

A4:正确答案：AD

A5:正确答案：B

A6:正确答案：A