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  3. The Nature and Aims of Archaeology IntroductionA)Archaeology is

The Nature and Aims of Archaeology IntroductionA)Archaeology is

游客2024-03-12  19
问题                 The Nature and Aims of Archaeology Introduction
A)Archaeology is partly the discovery of the treasures of the past, partly the meticulous work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the deserts of Central Asia; it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska. It is diving down to Spanish wrecks off the coast of Florida, and it is investigating the sewers of Roman York. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation so that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And it is the conservation of the world’ s cultural heritage against looting and against careless destruction.
B)Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. The rich mixture of danger and detective work has also made it the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers, from Agatha Christie with Murder in Mesopotamia to Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones. However far from reality such portrayals may be, they capture the essential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest—the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.
C)But how does archaeology relate to disciplines such as anthropology and history that are also concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science? And what are the responsibilities of the archaeologist in today’s world, where the past is manipulated for political ends and "ethnic cleansing" is accompanied by the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage?
Archaeology as anthropology
D)Anthropology at its broadest is the study of humanity—our physical characteristics as animals, and our unique non-biological characteristics that we call culture. Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist Edward Tylor usefully summarized in 1871 as "knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Anthropologists also use the term culture in a more restricted sense when they refer to the culture of a particular society, meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to that society which distinguish it from other societies. Anthropology is thus a broad discipline—so broad that it is generally broken down into three smaller disciplines: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology.
E)Biological anthropology, or physical anthropology as it used to be called, concerns the study of human biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved. Cultural anthropology—or social anthropology—analyzes human culture and society. Two of its branches are ethnography(the study at first hand of individual living cultures)and ethnology(which sets out to compare cultures using ethnographic evidence to derive general principles about human society).
F)Archaeology is the "past tense of cultural anthropology". Whereas cultural anthropologists will often base their conclusions on the experience of actually living within contemporary communities, archaeologists study past humans and societies primarily through their material remains—the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies.
G)Nevertheless, one of the most challenging tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Why are some dwellings round and others square? Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed "ethnoarchaeolo-gy", where like ethnographers they live among contemporary communities, but with the specific purpose of understanding how such societies use material culture—how they make their tools and weapons, why they build their settlements where they do, and so on.
H)Moreover, archaeology has an active role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studies constitute a developing field, where it is realized that the world’s cultural heritage is a diminishing resource, and one which holds different meanings for different people.
I)The presentation of the findings of archaeology to the public cannot avoid difficult political issues, and the museum curator and the popularizer today have responsibilities which some can be seen to have failed.
Archaeology as history
J)If, then, archaeology deals with the past, in what way does it differ from history? In the broadest sense, just as archaeology is an aspect of anthropology, so too is it apart of history—where we mean the whole history of humankind from its beginnings over 3 million years ago. Indeed for more than 99 percent of that huge span of time archaeology—the study of past material culture—is the only significant source of information, if one sets aside physical anthropology, which focuses on our biological rather than cultural progress. Conventional historical sources begin only with the introduction of written records around 3000 BC in western Asia, and much later in most other parts of the world(not until AD 1788 in Australia, for example).
K)A commonly drawn distinction is between prehistory—the period before written records—and history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written evidence. In some countries, "prehistory" is now considered a patronizing and derogatory term which implies that written texts are more valuable than oral histories, and which classifies their cultures as inferior until the arrival of Western ways of recording information.
L)To archaeology, however, which studies all cultures and periods, whether with or without writing, the distinction between history and prehistory is a convenient dividing line that simply recognizes the importance of the written word in the modern world, but in no way denigrates the useful information contained in oral histories.
Archaeology as a Science
M)Since the aim of archaeology is the understanding of humankind, it is a humanistic discipline, a humane study. And since it deals with the human past it is a historical discipline. But it differs from the study of written history—although it uses written history—in a fundamental way. The material the archaeologist finds does not tell us directly what to think. Historical records make statements, offer opinions, pass judgments(even if those statements and judgments themselves need to be interpreted).
N)The objects that archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing directly in themselves. It is we today who have to make sense of these things. In this respect the practice of archaeology is rather like that of the scientist. The scientist collects data(evidence), conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis(a proposition to account for the data), tests the hypothesis against more data, and then in conclusion devises a model that seems best to summarise the pattern observed in the data. The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural world. [br] Much of the work of archaeologists can be done using written records but they find oral histories equally valuable.
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答案 L
解析 本题意为考古学家大部分的工作可以用文献记载完成，但是他们认为口述记载同样珍贵。题干中的一对定位词是“written records”，“oral histories”，出现在L段，大意为“对于研究所有文化和所有时期的考古学而言，不管有没有文字，历史和史前史的区别只是承认文字重要性的传统分界线，绝不会减少包含在口述历史中有用的信息的重要性”。题干中的equally valuable是原文in no way denigrates theuseful information的对应点。
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