Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an archaeology class.

旁白：听一段考古学课的讲座。

Professor: So if I ask you what most archaeologists do with all those pieces of broken pottery they find at the excavation sites, you'd probably say that they help establish the time period of the site.

教授：那么，如果我问你们，考古学家们拿那些在挖掘地点发现的破碎的陶器用来做什么，你们可能会说，它们有助于确定遗迹的历史年代。

Pretty obvious. Huh?

（这个答案）很明显。对吧？

Pottery helps us order things in time to assign relative dates.

陶器帮助我们排列时间顺序，并且确定相应的年代日期。

Basically, when we date pottery, we look at its frequency at a given site.

当我们为陶器确定所属的年代时，我们主要观察它在某个特定地点出现的频率。

As you can probably surmise, styles of pottery vary over time, in terms of how they're made, what they're made of and what they were used for.

正如你所猜测的，陶器的样式随时间而变化，它们制造的方式、材料以及用途都会发生改变。

So as archaeologists, we build up a picture, a sequence of how pottery changed over time as well as how its popularity varied over time which we can tell by the frequency of a style at a site, how many occurrences we find at a given site.

所以作为考古学家，我们构建了一个情境，描绘的是陶器随着时间而改变的顺序，以及其流行性如何随时间改变，其中陶器的流行性可以通过遗址中发现某种样式的频率和数量来确定。

But pottery can provide evidence about a lot of things, not just dating evidence, not just evidence of the time period that pottery was created.

但是陶器可以为很多事物提供证据，不仅是用来确定年代，也不仅仅是陶器制作年代的证据。

So there is also another type of evidence that we call distributional evidence.

因此，也有另一种类型的证据，我们称之为分布证据。

OK, pottery is evidence of distribution.

好的，陶器是分布的证据。

It, pottery, provides evidence that trade took place.

陶器为贸易的发生提供了证据。

Pots were traded for themselves or given as gifts, but even more often they changed hands cause they were used as containers for food or wine.

这些陶器会作为贸易交换（的物品），也会作为礼物（赠送），但它们被转手的最主要的原因是它们被用来作为食物或葡萄酒容器。

To fully understand how pottery's used as distributional evidence, we have to know its origin, where it was made.

为了充分理解陶器是如何作为分布证据的，我们必须知道它的起源，也就是它的产地。

So how do we figure this out?

那么，我们怎么追根溯源呢？

Well, by studying what the pottery's made of, you look at the material that's... that a pot's made of, to know where it was made and its distribution.

可以通过研究陶器是由什么材料制成的，来了解它的产地和分布。

OK. A third kind of evidence is evidence of function, the function of the site where the pottery was found and sometimes about the lives of the people who lived there.

好的。第三种证据是功能证据，关于陶器出土地点的功能，有时关于在那里居住的人们的生活。

Now this evidence is a bit tougher to interpret than the other two.

现在这种类型的证据比其它两个类型要更加难以解读。

And there are several reasons for this.

这有几个原因。

First of all, pottery is usually not found in primary contexts, that is, it's often not found in the place where it was used.

首先，陶器通常不是在主要的环境中被发现的，也就是说，它通常不在它使用的地方被发现。

Think about you average town dump, you know the place where everyone's unwanted stuff ends up. Can you imagine archaeologists a thousand years from now digging up a town dump and then using the items found there to get meaningful information about how the objects found there were used?

想想城镇垃圾场，你们知道的，每个人不需要的东西最终流转到那里。你能想象考古学家挖一个距今为止上千年的城镇垃圾场，然后想通过在那里发现的东西，来获得一些有用的信息，得知那些被发现的物件是如何被使用的吗？

Probably not.

（这样做）可能是不行的。

A second reason why function is harder to identify is that not all objects found in one spot can be assumed to have identical functions even if they look similar.

功能性（证据）很难被鉴定的第二个原因是，不是所有在一个地点中找到的事物都有着相同的功能，即使它们看起来相似。

If you come across a collection of pots at a site, you need to work at the level of the group rather than the individual pots because you can't assume that they all have the same function just because they were found in the same place.

如果你研究在某个地点发现的一批罐子，你需要从组群的层面上来研究，而不是一个一个地研究，因为你不能因为它们在同一个地点被发现，就假设它们都有相同的功能。

So this is where pottery's form comes into play.

这就是陶器的形态开始发挥作用的地方。

The form of a pot can give us some ideas about its function, the suitability of the pottery to serve a specific function.

罐子的形态可以给我们一些关于其功能的线索，也就是其服务于特定功能的实用性。

However, we have to be careful when it comes to skeuomorphs.

然而，当涉及到仿制品时，我们不得不小心审视。

These objects are copies of the designs of other objects, but in another material.

这些仿制品复制了其它事物的设计，但是却以另一种材料来制造。

And this can be problematic, because sometimes the new or different material is not well suited to the design.

这可能会产生一些问题，因为有时新的或不同的材料并不适合原先的设计。

A good example of this comes from a fifteen-century Dutch ceramics, a bronze cauldron was copied in ceramic, including the sort of big angled handles, and while it worked well in bronze, it didn’t work in the ceramic skeuomorph.

一个典型的例子就是十五世纪的荷兰陶瓷制品，一个青铜鼎被复制成陶瓷鼎，包括大角度的把手柄（也被复制了），尽管在青铜鼎制品上，这样的手柄能够很好的运作，它在陶瓷同形物上并不能很好地发挥作用。

Well, because the ceramic handles couldn't support the weight of the pot when it's full, it just couldn’t function as it was intended to.

因为陶瓷手柄不能支撑被装满的器具的重量，它无法实现预期的功能。