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  3. Archeology Archeology, the branch of anthropology that is devoted to the study of the human past, often focuses on the period be

Archeology Archeology, the branch of anthropology that is devoted to the study of the human past, often focuses on the period be

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问题                         Archeology
Archeology, the branch of anthropology that is devoted to the study of the human past, often focuses on the period before people began to keep written records. Archeologists study the origin, spread, and evolution of culture by examining the remains of past societies. They share the task of other kinds of anthropologists in that they are trying to understand human behavior. The difference is that their materials are generally the unwritten records of past societies. They cannot sit down with living members of those societies and talk about what they have found. They cannot even observe living people, but must interpret the material evidence left by people long dead. Many archeologists distinguish between prehistoric archeology, which is the study of extinct cultures that left no written records, and historic archeology, which is the investigation of those groups for whom there are written materials to accompany the archeological evidence.
    What, then, can archeology contribute to our understanding of human culture and social behavior? First, we can learn much about the technology of early peoples through their material remains, as well as through analysis of such aspects of their life style as what they ate. We can tell, for example, whether a particular group lived mainly by hunting or fishing or by farming.
    A second aspect of the life of early peoples that is revealed to us through archeology is their economic practices. For example, sometimes we find pottery or jewelry made from materials that are known to have been available only in distant places. This usually means that these items were not made at the site but were obtained through some other means - either by traveling to the place where they are available or by trading with other groups. If we put together a picture of the distribution of such items over time, we can get an idea of the interactions among neighboring groups, and this in turn gives us clues about other aspects of culture that might have been borrowed or traded as well.
    Less evident than economics or technology, but still recognizable, is the political and social structure of past cultures. We can assume a great deal about the way a city was organized from the layout of the buildings and the types of housing found there. For example, if we find a large temple in the center of an ancient city and it is surrounded by fairly large dwelling sites, while the buildings on the outskirts of the settlement are smaller, we know that there were probably at least two classes of people and that the temple was at the center of the city not only in a physical sense but socially as well.
    Finally, archeological evidence can reveal a great deal about certain aspects of the religious and spiritual life of ancient societies.(A)When we are fortunate enough to find temples or other religious structures, we can determine their importance and their influence on the society.(B)But in other areas, it is very hard to interpret the evidence.(C)Thus we know little about ancient peoples’ belief systems, or their values and morals, their feelings about spirits, and so forth.(D)Even when we find material objects that might suggest such beliefs, we cannot ask anyone to explain their meaning but must go on what we know about other aspects of that society and later societies that seem to be similar to it.
    In sum, archeology gives us a chance to look into the past of the human species. But it is like doing a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, and without a picture of the finished puzzle on the box to work from. We have a few things that fit together; we can guess about many others; but we really don’t have enough to put it all together with complete confidence. Every new piece we find fits somewhere, though, and we never know when the next piece will give us the key to a whole new section of the puzzle of life in prehistoric times. That is the challenge and the excitement of archeology.
The word extinct in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、still living
B、very strange
C、no longer existing
D、extremely dangerous
答案C
解析 本题属于词汇题，主要考查考生能否根据上下文理解单词extinct。此处extinct在从句中意为“灭亡的，灭绝的”，用于解释“prehistoric archeology(史前考古学)”并区别于“historicarcheology(历史考古学)”，因此根据上下文语境可以推断，史前考古学研究的应该是已经灭绝的文化，故选C。选项A(仍然存活的)与正确意义正好相反，选项B(非常奇怪的)、选项D(极为危险的)都与上下文意义不相符。
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