单选题 Later the Greeks moved east from Cumae to Neapolis, the New City, a little farther along the coast where modern Naples now stands. We have a very good idea what life in this sun-splashed land was like during the Roman era because of the recovered splendor of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But as the well-trod earth of Campania continues to yield ancient secrets, Mastrolorenzo and Petrone, with their colleague Lucia Pappalardo, have put together a rich view of an earlier time and what may have been humankind's first encounter with the primal force of Vesuvius.
Almost all has come to light by chance. In May 2001, for example, construction workers began digging the foundation for a supermarket next to a desolate, weed-strewn intersection just outside the town of Nola. An archaeologist working for the province of Naples noticed several trances of burned wood a few feet below the surface, an indication of earlier human habitation. At 19 feet below, relicts of a perfectly preserved Early Bronze Age village began to emerge.
Over the next several months, the excavation unearthed three large prehistoric dwellings: horseshoe shaped huts with clearly demarked entrances, living areas, and the equivalent of kitchens. Researchers found dozens of pots, pottery plates, and crude hourglass-shaped canisters that still contained fossilized traces of almonds, flour, grain, acorns, olive-pits, even mushrooms. Simple partitions separated the rooms; one hut had what appeared to be a loft. The tracks of goats, sheep, cattle, and pigs, as well as their human masters, crisscrossed the yard outside. The skeletons of nine pregnant goats lay in an enclosed area that included an animal pen. If a skeleton can be said to cower, the bones of an apparently terrified dog huddled under the eaves of one roof. What preserved this prehistoric village, what formed a perfect impression of its quotidian contents right down to leaves in the thatch roofs and cereal grains in the kitchen containers, was the fallout and surge and mud from the Avellino eruption of Vesuvius. Claude Albore Livadie, a French archaeologist who published the initial report on the Nola discovery, dubbed it "a first Pompeii".
During May and June 2001, provincial archaeological authorities oversaw excavation of the site Mastrolorenzo hurried out to Nola, about 18 miles east of Naples. He and Pappalardo took samples of the ash and volcanic deposits, which contained chemical clues to the magnitude of the eruption. But then the scientific story veered off into the familiar opera buffa of Italian archaeology. The owner of the site agitated for construction of the supermarket to resume or to be compensated for the delay—not an unusual dilemma in a country where the backhoes and bulldozers of a modern economy clang against the ubiquitous remains of ancient civilizations.
Government archaeologists hastily excavated the site and removed the objects. As it turns out, the supermarket was never built, and all that remains of a site that miraculously captured one of civilization's earliest encounters with volcanic destruction is a hole in the ground on a vacant, weed-choked lot, the foundation walls of the huts barely visible. A small, weathered sign proclaiming the "Pompeii of Prehistory" hangs limply from a padlocked gate.
Despite the loss of Nola as well as some other archaeological sites, Mastrolorenzo, Petrone, Pappalardo, and American volcanologist Michael Sheridan triggered world wide fascination when they summarized these findings in the spring of 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). But their research went beyond mere archaeological documentation. The Avellino event, they wrote, "caused a social-demographic collapse and abandonment of the entire area for centuries. " The new findings, along with computer models, show that an Avellino-size eruption would unleash a concentric wave of destruction that could devastate Naples and much of its surroundings. In the world before Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, these warnings might have sounded as remote and transitory as those prehistoric footsteps. Not anymore.

单选题 According to the discovery of the relicts of Nola, we CANNOT conclude that people in this village
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】推断题。第三段中有对Nola废墟的详细描写。第二句讲述研究者发现了许多的罐、陶盘和粗糙的沙漏状的筒,可推断那时已有工艺制造技术,排除[A];沙漏状的筒中装着已经成为了化石的杏仁、面粉、谷粒、橡子、橄榄核甚至有蘑菇,面粉和谷粒的发现说明当时已经种植农作物,排除[B];在外面的院子发现山羊、绵羊、牛、猪和它们的主人,推断当时的人们已经有牲畜群,排除[C];九只怀孕的山羊的骨架躺在包括一个牲畜圈的一块封闭区域,可推断人和牲畜是分开住的,故答案为[D]。
单选题 According to the relicts, we can infer that domestic animal died because
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】推断题。第三段倒数第二句意为:将这个史前村庄保存下来的,并且使日常内容甚至是微小到茅草屋顶的叶子和厨房容器中的谷粒这样的东西都形成了完美痕迹的是Vesuvius的Avellino喷发时产生的沉降物、涌流和泥浆。可推断出那些牲畜是由于被掩埋后窒息而死,故答案为[B]。
单选题 The site of Nola was compared to Pompeii because
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】推断题。第一段中的第二句就指出,Pompeii的发现使我们很好地了解了罗马时代生活在这片土地上的人们的生活。显然,通过第三段详细的描述,这个保存完整的Nola废墟也同样使我们了解了史前人类的生活,故答案为[B]。
单选题 Which of the following statements about the Nola discovery is CORRECT?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】细节题。第二段第一句指出几乎这所有的发现都是偶然的,接着讲到建筑工人在挖地基的时候,一个考古学家发现了早期人类居住的迹象,这个前青铜器时代的村庄废墟才得以显现,所以并非是考古学家经过大量的研究之后发现的,排除[A];第一段的最后一句中提到这可能是人类第一次面对维苏威火山最初的威力,而[B]中的陈述语气过于绝对,故 错误;从第五段第一句讲到政府匆忙地发掘了遗址,并搬走了物品,可见政府对此废墟还是感兴趣的,排除[C];第五段描述的废墟荒凉的现状,以及第六段第一句中提到的the loss of Nola,可见这个遗址实际上是被毁掉了,故答案为[D]。
单选题 In the research mentioned in the last paragraph, the archaeologist expressed their concern on
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】细节题。[A]、[B]两项,文章中并未讲到他们的研究报告是否涉及;第六段第四句中提到他们新的发现加上电脑模型的展示表明了什么,并不是说将电脑模型运用于考古发现中有多么重要,排除[D];第六段第二、三句提到他们的研究不仅仅是考古纪录。他们写到Avellino事件引起了社会人口统计学的崩溃,和整个地区几个世纪的荒芜。新的发现加上电脑模型展示表明了一次Avellino大小的火山爆发将会释放足以毁灭那不勒斯及其周边大部分地区的破坏同心波,由此可见,在这个研究中,考古学家表达了火山爆发对人类社会毁灭性影响的关注,故答案为[C]。