首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Chaco Phenomenon P1: Between about 900 to 1150 AD, a mysterious Stone Age culture arose, flourished, and then vanished in th
The Chaco Phenomenon P1: Between about 900 to 1150 AD, a mysterious Stone Age culture arose, flourished, and then vanished in th
admin
2019-03-10
49
问题
The Chaco Phenomenon
P1: Between about 900 to 1150 AD, a mysterious Stone Age culture arose, flourished, and then vanished in the semi-desert region of the Southwestern United States. Named the Chaco culture after the canyon in which the principal ruins are found, nearly everything about this ancient society is shrouded in mystery. A truly remarkable transformation in settlement patterns occurred in the San Juan basin in northwestern New Mexico, with small household farmsteads giving way to aggregated communities centered on communal masonry buildings that are now called "great houses." These multi-level buildings of up to 800 rooms are scattered over thousands of square miles of the Four Corners area of the Southwest. The entire episode of great house construction in Chaco, the Bonito phase (A.D. 900-1140), was signifying an pronounced period of immense cooperative effort. Pueblo Chetro Ketl’s outer wall alone is calculated to be composed of 30 million stones which were brought to the canyon from distances between 80 and 150 kilometers away. Many of the stones had to be shaped before being positioned and built into a huge project. But by 1140 AD, the massive construction ceased abruptly, followed by a rapid decline in use of the great houses and apparent abandonment of the canyon in the thirteenth century.
P2: For more than a century archaeologists have struggled to understand the circumstances surrounding the rise and collapse of Chacoan society—dubbed the Chaco Phenomenon. Specifically, research has focused on determining why such an apparently inhospitable place as Chaco, which today is extremely arid and has very short growing seasons, should have been favored for the concentration of labor that must have been required for such massive construction projects over brief periods of time. Until the 1970s, scholars and the public alike had a long-shared notion that Chaco had been a forested oasis that attracted farmers who initially flourished but eventually fell victim to their own success and exuberance, as they employed unsustainable land-use practices to build their impressive communities. Yet there is no substantial evidence, archaeological or otherwise, to support such contention.
P3: However, recent geological field studies in Chaco have produced some table-turning evidence that may require a significant reassessment of the assumption that the canyon was not a favorable agricultural setting. It appears that during the extraordinary construction boom in the first half of the eleventh century, a devastating flood occurred, resulting in extreme difficulty irrigating the area. A large natural lake, near the biggest concentration of great houses, may have existed at the western end of Chaco and might have suspended sediment, which would then have flowed into the canyon. The presence of an abundance of water and, equally important, a source of sediment that replenished agricultural fields, presumably made the canyon an extremely attractive place for newly arriving people from the northern San Juan River basin. In fact, during the 1980s, this reconstruction was largely dismissed in response to evidence that there were only scattered trees along cliffs and escarpments above the canyon rather than woodlands in the first place, and that canyon soil was highly sensitive to increases in aridity and temperature and thus unsuitable for farming, regardless of the amount of trees. As long-standing scientific consensus was undergoing this transformation, the position of the canyon within a regional network of dispersed agricultural communities called up more academic attention. P4: The adoption of a regional perspective in explaining the Chaco Phenomenon was based in part on the discovery of formal trails. A combination of remote sensing techniques and ground verification defined a prehistoric road system which extended outward from Chaco Canyon into the surrounding San Juan Basin, later referred to as Chaco "outliers." These trails are densest around the concentration of great houses in the center, and the canyon itself is roughly at the center of the basin. Consequently, Chaco Canyon was intimately related to other settlements in a single cultural web flung across 30,000 square miles and which reached into Colorado and Utah, all tied together by a network of ancient roads. The current consensus view is that religion provided the fundamental explanation for this centrifugal pattern.
P5: After close study of great kivas (multipurpose rooms used for religious, political, and social functions), archeologists tend to depict Chaco as a location of high devotional expression and the pilgrimage center of a sacred landscape. The kiva structure itself, of whatever size, occupies a special and sacred place in Pueblo architecture. Excavation of some of these vaults suggests that they were once associated with ceremonies. Archaeological record presented some ritual artifacts, including caches of turquoise beads and pendants, unusual ceramic vessels and wooden objects, several rooms with multiple human burials, and especially the large number of kivas found in great houses. Most of these indicators occur only at Pueblo Bonito, but archaeologists generally assume that all the great houses had a similar ritual function. Some scholars have even argued that the great houses were temples instead of residences.
P4: ■ The adoption of a regional perspective in explaining the Chaco Phenomenon was based in part on the discovery of formal trails.
■ A combination of remote sensing techniques and ground verification defined a prehistoric road system which extended outward from Chaco Canyon into the surrounding San Juan Basin, later referred to as Chaco "outliers."
■ These trails are densest around the concentration of great houses in the center, and the canyon itself is roughly at the center of the basin. Consequently, Chaco Canyon was intimately related to other settlements in a single cultural web flung across 30,000 square miles and which reached into Colorado and Utah, all tied together by a network of ancient roads. ■ The current consensus view is that religion provided the fundamental explanation for this centrifugal pattern.
Why does the author state that "A large natural lake, near the biggest concentration of great houses, may have existed at the western end of Chaco"?
选项
A、To suggest that geological studies are better than archaeological studies in identifying the historical uses of land
B、To demonstrate that large construction projects require a large population of workers
C、To support the idea that Chaco may have been favorable to agriculture during the Bonito phase
D、To show that the Chacoan people preferred to build their homes near water
答案
C
解析
【修辞目的题】题目中信息与前一句都是对主题句的解释说明,因此答案为C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/V0fO777K
0
托福(TOEFL)
相关试题推荐
Completethetablebelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.
Completetheformbelow.WriteONEWORDAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.
Completetheformbelow.WriteONEWORDAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.
Completetheformbelow.WriteONEWORDAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.
Whichadvantageismentionedforeachofthefollowingrestaurants?ChooseSIXanswersfromtheboxandwritethecorrectletter
Completethenotesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.BirminghamExhibitionExampleAnswerPur
Completethenotesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSforeachanswer.CLIMATEANDARCHITECTURECasesandexamplesarefrompra
Completethenotesbelow.WriteONEWORDAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.MovingtoBanfordCityExampleLindarecommendsliving
ChooseTWOletters,A-E.WhichTWOsubjectsdidMartinalikebestbeforegoingtouniversity?AArtBHistoryCFrenchDEnglish
ResearchingtheoriginofmedievalmanuscriptsBackgroundMedievalmanuscripts—handwrittenbooksproducedbetweenthefifth
随机试题
当人们在交谈中提到“黄山”时,头脑中重现迎客松的形象,这是( )。
DNA的三级结构是
分段围堰导流法包括()。
根据《票据法》的规定,支票上可以记载非法定记载事项,并发生支票上的效力。()
偿还期在1年以上10年以下的国债被称为()
下列关于投资性房地产会计处理的表述中,正确的是()。
企业在年度中间终止经营活动的,应当自实际经营终止之日起()内,向税务机关办理当期企业所得税汇算清缴。
全国人民代表大会常务委员会对法律所作的解释属于()。
【2014年下】考试结束后,又要调整座位了,赵老师排座的原则是考分高的学生坐在教室里中间区域,考分低的学生坐在边角位置。赵老师的做法()。
()指人们为了减轻心理不安,有意识地逼迫自己不去回忆那些引起特别痛苦的体验与感受的事件,或者以某种方式有意地歪曲它们,使其不再出现。
最新回复
(
0
)