Irma

托福閱讀 練習小短文 - 澳洲土著的岩石藝術(歷史、藝術學科)   

多方知識結合的研究報告由為托福愛考的內容，像這篇文章主要要探討的內容其實就是澳洲的卡卡度國家公園的土著岩畫，單字不僅結合歷史和藝術之外，也包含部分的地理層面，這部分不僅可能出現在托福的閱讀部分、聽力的lecture 也可能出現，因此平時要多接觸Discovery或TED這型式的學習資訊，才容易掌握住考試內容。

Ever since European first explored Australia, people have been trying to understand the ancient rock drawings and carvings created by the Aborigines, the original inhabitants of the continent. Early in the nineteenth century, encounters with Aboriginal rock art tended to be infrequent and open to speculative interpretation, but since the late nineteenth century, awareness of the extent and variety of Australian rock art has been growing. In the latter decades of the twentieth century there were intensified efforts to understand and record the abundance of Australian rock art.

   The study of this art is a relatively new discipline in Australia. Over the past four decades new discoveries have steadily added to the body of knowledge. The most significant data have come from a concentration on three major questions. First, what is the age of Australian rock art? Second, what is its stylistic organization and is it possible to discern a sequence or a pattern of development between styles? Third, is it possible to interpret accurately the subject matter of ancient rock art, bring to bear all available archaeological techniques and the knowledge of present-day Aboriginal informants? 

   The age of Australia's rock art is constantly being revised, and earlier datings have been proposed as the result of new discoveries. Currently, reliable scientific evidence dates the earliest creation of art on rock surfaces in Australia to somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. This in itself is an almost incomprehensible span of generations, and one that makes Australia's rock art the oldest continuous art tradition in the world.

  Although the remarkable antiquity of Australia's rock art is now established, the sequences and meanings of its images have been widely debated. Since the mid-1970s, a reasonably stable picture has formed of the organization of Australian rock art. In order to create a sense of structure to this picture, researchers have relied on a distinction that still underlies the forms of much indigenous visual culture-a distinction between geometric and figurative elements. Simple geometric repeated patterns-circles, concentric circles, and lines-constitute the iconography (characteristic images) of the earliest rock-art sites found across Australia. The frequency with which certain simple motifs appear in these oldest sites has led rock-art researchers to adopt a descriptive term-the Panaramitee style-a label which takes its name from the extensive rock pavements at Panaramitee North in desert South Australia, which are covered with motifs pecked into the surface. Certain features of these engravings lead to the conclusion that they are of great age-geological changes had clearly happened after the designs had been made and local Aboriginal informants, when first questioned about them, seemed to know nothing of their origins. Furthermore, the designs were covered with "desert varnish," a glaze that develops on rock surfaces over thousands of years of exposure to the elements. The simple motifs found at Panaramitee are common to many rock-art sites across Australia. Indeed, sites with engravings of geometric shapes are also to be found on the island of Tasmania, which was separated from the mainland of the continent some 10,000 years ago.

  In the 1970s when the study of Australian archaeology was in an exciting phase of development, with the great antiquity of rock art becoming clear.   Lesley Maynard, the archaeologist who coined the phrase "Panaramitee style," suggested that a sequence could be determined for Australian rock art, in which a geometric style gave way to a simple figurative style (outlines of figures and animals), followed by a range of complex figurative styles that, unlike the pan-Australian geometric tradition tended to much greater regional diversity. While accepting that this sequence fits the archaeological profile of those sites, which were occupied continuously over many thousands of years， a number of writers have warned that the underlying assumption of such a sequence-a development from the simple and the geometric to the complex and  naturalistic-obscures the cultural continuities in Aboriginal Australia, in which geometric symbolism remains fundamentally important. In this context the simplicity of a geometric motif may be more apparent than real. Motifs of seeming simplicity can encode complex meanings in Aboriginal Australia. And has not twentieth-century art shown that naturalism does not necessarily follow abstraction in some kind of predetermine sequence?   

簡譯

自從歐洲人第一次探索澳大利亞，人們就開始瞭解那些大陸的原始居民-土著人創造的古代岩石畫和岩石雕刻。在十九世紀早期，人們並不經常見到這些土著的岩石藝術，並且對此只有一些推斷性的解釋，但是自十九世紀晚期以來，人們對這些現存的種類繁多數量龐大的澳大利亞岩石藝術的瞭解越來越多。後來的二十世紀幾十年裏，更多的精力被投入到瞭解和記錄這些數量眾多的澳大利亞岩石藝術中。

岩石藝術的研究在澳大利亞是一門相對比較新的學科，在過去四十多年的發現使這門學科不斷變得充實。其中最有意義的資料主要集中於三個問題：首先，澳大利亞岩石藝術的年代。第二，它的組織風格是什麼?是否可能找出這一系列風格的發展變化的順序或者模式?第三，有沒有可能在利用當前的考古技術和對當今土著博學者的資訊準確的解讀出這些岩石藝術的主題?

澳大利亞岩石藝術的所處的年代一直在修正，一些新發現為早期的年代測定提供了依據。目前，可靠的科學證據測定出最早的岩石藝術創作於大約在3萬到5萬年前。這一年代本身幾乎是不可思議的年代跨度，使得澳大利亞岩石藝術成為世界上最古老的藝術流派。

儘管現在這一的引人注目的古跡被人們發現，但是人們對於這些岩石圖像的產生的時間順序和含義存在著廣泛的爭議。二十世紀七十年代中期以來，一種合理的穩定描寫形成了了澳大利亞岩石藝術的組織結構。研究人員通過區分岩石藝術圖案中的幾何元素和象徵元素來研究其結構，這一區分依然普遍存在于當地視覺文化中的。簡單的幾何重複圖案-圓、同心圓和線條組成了在澳大利亞發現的最早期岩石藝術遺址的圖像。這一特定的藝術主題在這些古老的遺址上的頻繁出現讓岩石藝術研究人員採用了一個描述性的術語-Panaramite風格-一個因Panaramitee(位於澳大利亞南部沙漠的北部)廣闊的岩石路面而得名的稱號-這些岩石的表面都刻有這些主題。這些雕刻的某些特徵可以得出結論：他們年代久遠。很明顯在圖樣被雕刻之後發生了地質變化而且當地的土著的博學者被第一次問道這些雕刻時，似乎對他們的起源一無所知。此外，這些雕刻圖案被沙漠岩漆所覆蓋，沙漠漆岩是岩石表面經過數千年的暴露于自然環境形成的光滑面。實際上有幾何圖形的雕刻在塔斯馬尼亞島也有發現，塔斯馬尼亞島1萬年前就從澳大利亞大陸分離了出去。  

在20世紀七十年代澳大利亞考古蓬勃發展的階段，隨著大量岩石藝術的出現，考創造了片語"Panaramitee 風格"的古學家萊斯利o梅納德認為澳大利亞岩石藝術的發展順序可以這樣確定下來:幾何風格被簡單的象徵風格(人物和動物的輪廓)所替代，隨後又被一系列複雜的象徵風格所替代，這種複雜的象徵風格不同於泛澳洲的幾何圖案，它有著巨大的地區差異性。澳大利亞岩石藝術的這一發展順序和這些廣泛存在著岩石藝術地區的考古資料相一致。一些學者警告說，這一順序隱含的假設(從簡單的和幾何圖案發展到複雜的自然主義圖案)隱藏了原始澳大利亞文化上的連續性，在原始澳大利亞，幾何的符號體系一直是非常重要的。在這一背景下，幾何主題的圖案的簡單性很可能比真是的東西更明顯。在原始澳大利亞，看似簡單的圖案也能包含複雜的含義。20世紀的藝術難道還沒有表明自然主義並不需要遵循某種抽象的順序嗎?