新托福听写训练 第26期（在线收听）

Listen to part of a talk in an archeology class.

Now let we discuss the proper way to dig for the artifacts in an archeology site. Let's turn on our attention to the kinds of objects we might excavate,there, and what they can tell us about colonial life here on the east coast of north America. One thing we hope to learn when they study the buttons or broken dishes or other artifacts that got from the site, is just how long ago people were living there. So one of the most useful finds obviously would be a coin. But even a object doesn't have a year stamp right on it can still help the archeologists to determine just when the site was being used. For instance, one object from 1600 and 1700 you likely find is the clay pipe. Smoking was common then but not cigarettes. Tobacco was generally smoked in long thin pipe—clay pipes manufactured in England. These imported clay pipes were so cheap that even the poorer could afford to use them and then just throw them away. That's why they were so common throughout the colonies and why we find so many broken and discard pipes in archeological digs. But the style of the clay pipe, the shape of bowl, the link of skin, the diameter of the hole all involved over the years. So we can assign seriously precise date to a pipe just by looking at it and comparing it to the similar pipe we already know the age of it. And that information will tell us how long ago, settlers were living in that site, and can help us to date the other artifacts found there. Let me pause here, and ask you now, what you think some of the other common objects might be and what we might be able to learn from them.