The Archaeologists Who Wouldn't Dig

About PRAP:

    PRAP is a multi-disciplinary, diachronic archaeological expedition formally organized in 1990 to investigate the history of prehistoric and historic settlement and land use in western Messenia in Greece, in an area centered on the Bronze Age administrative center known as Palace of Nestor. The project has employed the techniques of archaeological surface survey, along with natural environmental investigations (geological, geomorphological, geophysical, and paleobotanical).

    In the summers of 1991-95, approximately 40 square kilometers in western Messenia were examined intensively. These included areas to the north, east, south, and west of the modern town of Hora, and the entirety of the Englianos Ridge (Upper and Lower)─the location of the Palace of Nestor. Fieldwork doubled the number of sites previously known in the area intensively surveyed. In addition, nearly all previously known sites in an additional 30 square kilometers have been reinvestigated; the spatial extent and chronological components of these have been defined with greater precision.

　 Since 1990, the Minnesota Archaeological Researches in the Western Peloponnese (MARWP), a project sponsored by the University of Minnesota and directed by Professor Fred Cooper, has been engaged in the preparation of an actual state plan of the architectural remains excavated by Carl W. Blegen of the University of Cincinnati between 1939 and 1966. Preliminary reports on research sponsored by MARWP, including suggested reinterpretations of several of Blegen's conclusions and illustrations of two recently discovered fragments of Linear B tablets, are available on the WWW.

    PRAP has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Louise Taft Semple Fund, the Department of Classics of the University of Cincinnati, the Department of Classics of the University of Illinois at Chicago and numerous private donors.

About Sandy Pylos : An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino (by Jack L. Davis (Editor)):

    Pylos is a natural harbor located on the southwestern coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula of Greece. Homer's Odyssey describes "Sandy Pylos" as the seat of King Nestor, who welcomed Telemachos as he searched for his father, Odysseus, ten years after the Trojan War. Millennia later, modern Greece won its independence from Turkey there in the 1827 naval battle of Navarino.

    Sandy Pylos traces the archaeological history of Pylos and surrounding regions in Messenia from the Stone Age to the present. Designed for general readers and travelers interested in ancient Greece, as well as scholars, it presents the findings of a consortium of archaeologists, natural scientists, historians, and art historians who joined forces to study the history of not just one archaeological site, but of an entire landscape, and not just in a single period, but at all times in the past.

    This approach, based on understanding a whole regional system over an extended time from many disciplinary perspectives, represents the state-of-the-art in archaeological research. It clearly demonstrates how historical and archaeological evidence can be synthesized to offer richer insights into the past.

Language notes:

1. Linear B: （公元前15-12世纪希腊克里特岛的克诺索斯及希腊大陆上用代表音节的线形符号书写的）B类线形文字.

2. By plotting the locations of ceramics, stone tools and other artifacts that weathered out of the soil across wide areas, PRAP determines large-scale patterns of human activity.

(散布在大范围区域内的陶器、石具和许多其它文物风化到土地表层，通过弄清它们的具体位置，PRAP确定了大规模的人类活动方式。)

Plot: mark the position of.

    e.g. He started to plot lines of ancient sites.

3. The Pylos I was looking for turned out to be a short but terrifying taxi ride away: fourteen kilometer north of town, along the Bay of Navarino and then several hundreds yards abruptly uphill, to the beak of a sharp ridge called Ano Englianos.

(要到达我所寻找的皮勒斯，需要再乘坐出租车。这是一段虽短却极为艰难的旅途，出城北行14公里，经过那瓦利诺海湾，然后沿着突兀的山坡爬行数百码，爬上被称作阿诺·恩格利诺斯的陡峭山脊顶部。)

Turn out: prove to be.

   e.g. she turned out to the daughter of an old friend.

4. hangar: a shed or shelter.

5. wanax: （希腊古城迈锡尼或克里特岛的）国王，统治者

6. macchia: 地中海沿岸的灌木丛林.

7. Collected and plotted, the age-sorted sherds pile up electronically around certain sites, indicating peaks of activity and population.

（这些搜集和整理的按年代划分的陶器碎片经过电子计算机处理，标在一些场地周围，表明人类活动和人口的高峰点。而调查就是要找到这样的模式。）

Sort: to arrange systematically in groups, separate according to class, type, etc.

    e. g. She sorted out her clothes, some to be kept, some to be thrown away.

8. Those explosions set off the first of what pollen and soil samples show were four waves of dramatic environmental change, which gradually wiped out the native vegetation and stripped away most of the topsoil.

(这些膨胀引起花粉样本和土壤样本所展示的四个激进环境变化浪潮中的第一个——渐渐地抹去原有的植被，侵蚀掉大部分的表层土。)

Strip away: remove the covering.

    e.g. strip away the old wall paper.

Text 2

History

About some historians:

    Edward Gibbon (1737-94):   He was the son of an English country gentleman and was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; and, as Chamber's points out, "he derived little benefit from either." After schooling in Lausanne, Switzerland (during which time he was to fall in love with the parson's daughter, and to which his father put a quick end) the young Gibbon returned to London where he took up residence in his father's household and found the leisure for scholarly study and bookish solitude.

    Gibbon's cynicism, in regards to history, viz., "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind" added "a spice to the work which relates it to literature rather than history. His accuracy in the use of his sources has not been questioned."

    Gibbon's major work, of course is his multi-volumed The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire written through the years, 1776 to 1787 and is the standard history on the Roman civilization.

    Thucydides (about 471─about 400 BC) : an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world.

Language notes:

1. History is thus used not only to tell students how their national way of life developed but also to justify and support national ideals and institutions.

(因此，历史不但使学生了解到自己国家的生活方式是如何形成的，也被用来维护和支持民族理念和国家制度。)

Justify: to show or prove something to be right or reasonable.
    e.g. The person appointed has fully justified our confidence.

2. For example, a historian's social, economic, and religious views help determine what he or she accepts as "normal" in another person.

(例如，一个历史学家的社会、经济、和宗教观会影响他或她对另外一个人的行为是否“正常”的判断。)

Determine: decide, influence.
    e.g. It will be her mental attitude that determine her future.

3. This judgment, in turn, determines what he or she accepts as reliable testimony or as likely sequence of events.

(反过来，这一判断又会影响该历史学家判断什么是可信的，或一系列事件的可能顺序。)

Testimony: evidence in support of a fact or an assertion; proof.

    e.g. There is a widespread testimony that this ominous fact is due to inherent biological defects in the crowded life of cities.

4. In fact, many scholars today question whether history has any meaning other than that which people read into it.

(实际上，现在许多学者都在寻思，除了人们强加给历史的意义之外，历史是否有任何意义。)

Other than: apart from, except
    e.g. He claims not to own anything other than his home.

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