新东方安阳：托福TPO23真题解析

　　托福听力真题TPO第1套的第5篇是考古学讲座。讲座的整体思路和出题点分析如下。

　　讲座开篇

　　教授开门见山引出主旨OK, we’ve been talking about early agriculture in the near east. So let’s concentrate on one site and see what we can learn from it.这里对应本篇讲座的第一题，主旨题What is the lecture mainly about? 答案很明显为 B. The site of a Neolithic town. 一个新石器时期的遗址，与开篇主旨句中的关键词site一致。这里考生要注意在考古学讲座中site特指遗址。

　　那么，当我们知道文章的主线是讲The site of a Neolithic town之后，同学们肯定会思考：教授到底要讲哪一个Neolithic site?这一site有哪些特点?为何值得探讨?因此接下来重点要听支持主旨句的细节信息。

　　讲座中间

　　首先教授介绍了这个Neolithic town叫做Catalhoyuk ，接下来重点讲了它的形成时期Neolithic，石器时期晚期，后面讲了But you got to remember that it wasn’t just any stone they had, they had obsidian. And umm... obsidian is a black, volcanic, well, almost like glass. It flakes very nicely into really sharp points. The sharpest tools of the entire Stone Age were made of obsidian.由转折词But引出专有名词obsidian，并讲了obsidian最大的特点可以制作the sharpest tool，所以本篇第二题What does the professor imply about the tools used by the people of Catalhoyuk? 的答案为B. They were among the sharpest tools available at the time. 符合转折和最高级强调原则，值得关注。

　　接下来教授重点讲了Anyway, what I wanna focus on is the way the town was built.这个城市最大的特点是 But what’s really interesting is that there are no spaces between them, no streets in other words, and so generally no doors on the houses either. People walked around on the roofs and entered the house through a hatchway on the roof, down a wooden ladder.即房屋之间没有空隙，人们通过屋顶天花板出入房屋;后面引出房屋另一个特点There tends to be a lot of obsidian flakes and chips in the hearth ashes, but no chimney. The smoke just went out the same hatchway that people used for going in and out themselves.即屋内无出烟口，烟雾通过屋顶天花板排出。此处对应第3题What does the professor say about the entrances to the houses in Catalhoyuk? Click two answers. 答案为A. They were in the roof. C. They allowed smoke to escape from the houses. 房屋入口有两个特点，一个是位于屋顶;另一个是排出烟雾。

　　接下来教授重点讲了And that’s another unusual feature of Catalhoyuk, the burial sites. The graves have all been found under the houses, right under the floors.这里对应第4题What does the professor say about Catalhoyuk graves? 答案很明显为C. The graves were located under the house floors. 坟墓位于房子地板下方。

　　讲座结尾

　　结尾部分重点阐述考古学家对上述城市建筑特征的原因分析。教授转述了一些考古学家的假说，I mean, you might think it was for protection or something, but there has been no evidence found yet of any violent attack that would indicate that kind of danger. It maybe they wanted to live as near as possible to their ancestors’ graves and be buried near them themselves. But it makes a good point. 教授对这些假说的观点是Based on excavations, we can know the layout of the houses and the location of the graves, but we’re only guessing when we tried to say why they did it that way.由转折词but引出态度关键词guessing，这里对应第5题What does the professor think of the idea that the inhabitants of Catalhoyuk deliberately arranged their houses so that they could live near their ancestors’ graves? 所以本题答案为A. She thinks it is a good guess, but only a guess.这仅仅是一种推测。

　　最后一段又讲了一个小话题And the physical artifacts can give us clues, but there is a lot we can’t really know. So, for instance, their art.即使物质文物会给我们一些线索，还有很多无法获知的信息，比如艺术。后面降到了艺术的两个特点 They painted on the plastered walls and usually they painted hunting scenes with wild animals in them. Now they did hunt and they also raised cereal crops and kept sheep, but we don’t know why so many of the paintings are of hunting scenes. 本处为第一个特点画作都是关于打猎场景的;Was it supposed to have religious or magical significance? That’s the kind of thing we can only guess at based on clues. And hopefully, further excavation of Catalhoyuk will yield more clues. But we’ll probably never know for sure. 画作的意义至今未知，仍是一种猜测。画作还有一个特点，是文中前面讲述房屋建设特点的时候提到的You can see on the walls, which they plastered and decorated with paintings. They ended up with a layer of black soot on them, and so did people’s lungs.即画作有一层被烟熏过的痕迹。这里对应第6题多选题，What are three things the professor says about the artwork of Catalhoyuk ? Click 3 answers. 答案为B. It became covered with soot. D. It significance is unknown. E. It contains many hunting scenes.

　　希望本篇解析可以起到抛砖引玉的作用，给备考托福的考生在对真题的理解上以启发。(济南新东方美国留学中心 托福听力教师 黄芳)