Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

一、Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力原文：

Narrator:Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

Male Professor:Good morning.Ready to continue our review of prehistoric art?Um,today we’ll be covering the Upper Paleolithic period—um,which I'm roughly defining as the period from 35,000 to 8,000 B.C.Um,a lot of those cave drawings you’ve all seen come from this period,uh,

but we'll also be talking about portable works of art—uh,things that could be carried around from place to place.Here's one example.This sculpture is called“The Lady with the Hood,”and it was carved from ivory,probably a,a mammoth's tusk.Its age is a bit of a mystery.According to one source,it dates from,um,22,000 B.C.,but other sources claim it’s been dated closer to 30,000 B.C.Um,Amy?

Female Student:Why don't we know the exact date when this…head was made?

Male Professor:That’s a fair question.We’re talking about prehistory here—uh,so,obviously,the artists didn’t put a,a signature or a date on anything they did.So,how do we know when this figure was carved?

Male Student:Last semester,I took an archaeology class,and we spent a lot of time on,uh,studying ways to date things.One technique I remember was,um,using the location of an object to date it.Like how deep was it buried.Male Professor:That would be stratigraphy.Stratigraphy is used for dating portable art.When archaeologists are digging at a site,they make very careful notes about which stratum—which layer of earth—they find things in.And,you know,the general rule is that the oldest layers are at the lowest level.But this only works if the site hasn’t been touched and the layers are intact.

Um,a problem with this dating method is that an object could have been carried around...used for several generations before it was discarded.So,it might be much older than the layer,or even the site,where it was found.The,uh,the stratification technique gives us the minimum age of an object,which isn’t necessarily its,its true age.Uh,Tom,in your archaeology class,did you talk about radiocarbon dating?

Male Student:Yeah,we did.Um,that had to do with,uh,chemical analysis.Something to do with measuring the amount of radiocarbon that’s left in,oh,organic stuff.Because we know how fast radiocarbon decays,we can figure out the age of the organic material.

Male Professor:The key word there is“organic.”Is art made of organic material?Male Student:Well,you said“The Lady with the Hood”was carved out of ivory—that's organic.Male Professor:Absolutely.Any other examples?Female Student:Well,when they did those cave drawings,didn't they use,like,charcoal?Or maybe colors...dyes made from plants?

Male Professor:Fortunately they did,a-at least some of the time.So,it turns out that radiocarbon dating works for a lot of prehistoric art.Uh,but again,there's a problem.Um,this technique destroys what it analyzes,so ya-you have to chip off bits of the object for testing.Obviously,we’re reluctant to do that in some cases.And,and apart from that,there's,there's another problem:the,the date tells you the age of the material—say,a bone or,or a tree—the,the object is made from,but,but not the date when the artist actually created it.So with radiocarbon dating,we get the maximum possible age for the object,but it could be younger.OK,um,let's say our scientific analysis has produced an age range,can we narrow it down?

Female Student:Um,could we look for similar styles or motifs?You know,try to find things common to one time period.

Male Professor:We do that all the time,and when we see similarities in pieces of art,we assume some connection in,in time or place.But...but is it possible that we could be imposing our own values on that analysis?Male Student:I'm sorry,I don’t get your point.

Male Professor:Um,well,we have all kinds of preconceived ideas about how artistic styles developed.For example,a,a lot of people think the presence of details demonstrates that the work was done by a more sophisticated artist while,um,a lack of details suggests a,a primitive style.But trends in art in the last century or so certainly challenge that idea.

Don't get me wrong,though,um,analyzing the styles of prehistoric artifacts can help dating them,but we need to be careful with the idea that,um,artistic development occurs in,in a straight line from simple to complex representations.Female Student:What you’re saying is...I mean,I get the feeling that this is like a legal process,like building a legal case.The more pieces of evidence we have,the closer we get to the truth.

Male Professor:Great analogy.And now you can see why we don't have an exact date for our sculpture“The Lady with the Hood.”

二、Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力中文翻译：

旁白：在艺术史课上听一节课的一部分。

男教授：早上好。准备好继续我们对史前艺术的回顾了吗？嗯，今天我们将讨论旧石器时代晚期，我大致将其定义为公元前35000年至8000年。嗯，你们看到的很多洞穴绘画都来自这一时期，呃，

但我们也将讨论便携式艺术品，呃，可以从一个地方带到另一个地方的东西。这里有一个例子。这件雕塑被称为“戴头巾的女士”，它是用象牙雕刻的，可能是猛犸象的象牙。它的年龄有点神秘。根据一个消息来源，它的年代是，呃，公元前22000年，但其他消息来源声称它的年代更接近公元前30000年，艾米？

女学生：为什么我们不知道这个……头的确切日期？

男教授：这是一个公平的问题。我们这里谈论的是史前史，所以，很明显，艺术家们没有在他们所做的任何事情上签名或日期。那么，我们怎么知道这尊雕像是什么时候刻的呢？

男学生：上学期，我上了一堂考古学课，我们花了很多时间，呃，研究确定年代的方法。我记得的一种技术是，嗯，利用物体的位置来确定日期。比如它埋得有多深。男教授：那就是地层学。地层学用于测定便携式艺术品的年代。当考古学家在遗址挖掘时，他们会非常仔细地记录下他们在哪一层土壤中发现的东西。而且，你知道，一般的规则是，最古老的层位于最低层。但这只有在网站没有被触碰并且图层完好无损的情况下才有效。

嗯，这种测年方法的一个问题是，可能有物体被带在周围。。。在被丢弃之前已经使用了好几代。因此，它可能比发现它的所在层，甚至是所在地要古老得多。分层技术给了我们一个物体的最小年龄，它不一定是它的，它的真实年龄。呃，汤姆，在你的考古学课上，你谈过放射性碳年代测定吗？

男学生：是的，是的。这和化学分析有关。与测量有机物中残留的放射性碳量有关。因为我们知道放射性碳的衰变速度，所以我们可以计算出有机物质的年龄。

男教授：这里的关键词是“有机”艺术是由有机材料制成的吗？男学生：嗯，你说“戴头巾的女士”是用有机象牙雕刻而成的。男教授：当然。还有其他例子吗？女学生：嗯，当他们画那些洞穴的时候，他们不是用了木炭吗？或者可能是颜色。。。植物制成的染料？

男教授：幸运的是，至少有一段时间他们做到了。所以，放射性碳年代测定对许多史前艺术都有效。呃，但还是有个问题。嗯，这项技术破坏了它所分析的内容，所以你必须切掉一些对象进行测试。显然，在某些情况下，我们不愿意这样做。除此之外，还有另一个问题：日期告诉你材料的年龄，比如骨头或树，物体是由什么制成的，但不是艺术家实际创作的日期。因此，通过放射性碳年代测定，我们可以得到物体的最大可能年龄，但它可能更年轻。好吧，嗯，假设我们的科学分析得出了年龄范围，我们能缩小它吗？

女学生：嗯，我们可以找相似的样式或图案吗？你知道，试着找出一个时间段的共同点。

男教授：我们一直都是这样做的，当我们看到艺术作品中的相似之处时，我们会假设在时间或地点上存在某种联系。但是但是，我们是否有可能将自己的价值观强加给这种分析？男学生：对不起，我不明白你的意思。

男教授：嗯，我们对艺术风格的发展有各种先入为主的看法。例如，很多人认为细节的存在表明这件作品是由一位更老练的艺术家完成的，而缺乏细节则意味着一种原始的风格。但上个世纪左右的艺术趋势肯定会挑战这一观点。

别误会，虽然，嗯，分析史前文物的风格有助于确定它们的年代，但我们需要注意的是，嗯，艺术的发展是在，从简单到复杂的表现方式之间的直线上发生的。女生：你的意思是。。。我的意思是，我觉得这就像一个法律程序，就像建立一个法律案件。我们掌握的证据越多，就越接近真相。

男教授：很好的类比。现在你可以明白为什么我们的雕塑“戴兜帽的女士”没有确切的日期了

三、Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力问题：

Q1:1.What is the talk mainly about?

A.Techniques for locating archaeological sites

B.Methods of preserving archaeological sites

C.Limitations of some techniques for dating artifacts

D.Difficulties in determining where artifacts were created

Q2:2.According to the professor when might stratigraphy provide misleading information about a portable object?

A.When the object has decomposed over time

B.When the object is older than the site at which it was found

C.When the object is found in the lowest soil layer of a site

D.When the object was broken during excavation

Q3:3.What are two disadvantages of radiocarbon dating?[Click on 2 answers.]

A.It cannot be used for dating art made of organic material.

B.It causes damage to the material being analyzed.

C.It can be used for dating only portable art.

D.It cannot prove when a piece of art was made.

Q4:4.What is the professor's opinion about the practice of dating a piece of art by analyzing its artistic style?

A.It provides the strongest type of dating evidence.

B.It is more useful for some types of art than others.

C.Use of the practice has improved over the last century.

D.Some analysts make questionable assumptions when using it.

Q5:5.How does the woman summarize the professor’s main point in the talk?

A.By drawing a parallel with a process common to the legal field

B.By repeating a comment the professor made at the beginning of class

C.By referring to a study that supports the professor s theory

D.By comparing the professor's remarks with statements in the textbook

Q6:play6.Why does the professor say this:

A.To make the point that written records are not important.

B.To explain why the question is worth discussing.

C.To justify the omission of an important point.

D.To express his opinion about the quality of prehistoric art.

四、Prehistoric Art Dating托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：C

A2:正确答案：B

A3:正确答案：BD

A4:正确答案：D

A5:正确答案：A

A6:正确答案：B