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Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an archaeology class.
旁白：請聽一段考古學課堂講座的節選。
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. Pretty obvious. Huh?
教授：如果我問你們，大多數考古學家如何處理他們在挖掘現場發現的所有碎陶片，你們可能會說這些陶片有助于確定遺址的年代。顯而易見，對吧？
Pottery helps us order things in time to assign relative dates. Basically, when we date pottery, we look at its frequency at a given site.
陶器幫助我們按時間順序排列事物，從而確定相對年代。總體來說，當我們測定陶器年代時，我們會觀察它在特定遺址的出現頻率。
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.
你們或許能猜到，陶器的風格會隨時間變化，包括制作方式、原料構成以及用途等方面。
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.
因此作為考古學家，我們會構建一幅圖景，即陶器隨時間變化的序列，以及其流行程度的變化（這可以通過某種風格在遺址中的出現頻率來判斷，我們在特定遺址發現該風格陶器的數量）。
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.
但陶器能提供的證據遠不止斷代信息，也不僅僅是陶器制作年代的證據。
So there is also another type of evidence that we call distributional evidence.
還存在另一種我們稱為“分布證據”的類型。
OK, pottery is evidence of distribution. It, pottery, provides evidence that trade took place.
是的，陶器本身就是分布證據。它證明了貿易行為的存在。
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.
陶罐可能作為商品被交易或作為禮物贈送，但更常見的情況是它們因作為食物或酒水的容器而易主。
To fully understand how pottery's used as distributional evidence, we have to know its origin, where it was made. So how do we figure this out?
要完整理解陶器如何作為分布證據使用，我們必須知道它的起源，即制作地點。那么如何確定這一點呢？
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.
通過研究陶器的制作材料，觀察陶罐的原料構成，你就能知道它的產地和流通范圍。
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。第三種證據類型是“功能證據”，即通過發現的陶器推斷遺址的功能，有時還能推測當時居民的生活方式。
Now this evidence is a bit tougher to interpret than the other two. And there are several reasons for this.
這種證據比前兩種更難解讀，原因有幾個。
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，陶器通常不是在原始背景中被發現的，也就是說，它往往不在最初被使用的位置。
Think about you average town dump, you know the place where everyone's unwanted stuff ends up.
想象一下普通的城鎮垃圾場，所有人丟棄不需要物品的地方。
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?
你能想象千年后的考古學家挖掘這樣的垃圾場，然后通過發現的物品來獲取有意義的信息，了解這些物品當初的用途嗎？
Probably not. 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.
很可能不行。第二個原因是，即使在同一地點發現的外觀相似的器物，也不能假定它們具有相同功能。
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.
如果在遺址發現一組陶罐，你需要在群體層面而非單個陶罐層面進行研究，因為不能僅憑發現位置相同就假定它們功能一致。
So this is where pottery's form comes into play. The form of a pot can give us some ideas about its function, the suitability of the pottery to serve a specific function.
這時陶器的形態就起作用了。陶罐的形態能給我們一些功能線索，即該陶器是否適合特定用途。
However, we have to be careful when it comes to skeuomorphs. These objects are copies of the designs of other objects, but in another material.
但遇到仿形物時必須謹慎。這類器物復制了其它物品的設計，但是卻以另一種材料來制造。
And this can be problematic, because sometimes the new or different material is not well suited to the design.
這會產生問題，因為新材料可能并不適合原有設計。
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.
15世紀荷蘭陶瓷就是個典型例子，有人用陶瓷復制青銅大鍋，包括那種大型有棱角的手柄，而這種設計在青銅材質上表現良好，但陶瓷仿制品卻不行。
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.
因為當鍋裝滿時，陶瓷手柄根本無法承受重量，就完全無法實現預期功能。
