6月雅思开场阅读延续了惯有的文章内容搭配，分别是历史类的罗马宫殿、动物类的猛犸象和社会科学类的商业事故。文章总体来说偏简单，难度3颗星。出现了一篇11年8月13号考过的旧题关于猛犸象的灭亡。此次阅读考试题型偏简单，未出现难处理的主旨类题型，虽然历史类及社会科学类的文章普遍比较晦涩难懂，整场考试还是易于把控。
Passage1 Fishbourne Roman Palace罗马宫殿的发现研究
1、主要内容：
本篇讲述的是对一个罗马宫殿的考查。
第一段总述该宫殿的历史;
第二段描述发现的经过;
第三段对其建筑进行描写;
第四段列举了关于该宫殿为谁而建的两种假说;
最后段说明该地方现状。
2、题型分布：
填空题3题、判断题6题，填空题4题
3、概述：
文章属于典型的历史描述，结构清晰，配合简单基础的题型，尽量能够在15分钟完成。
4、相关阅读资料：
Fishbourne Roman Palace is in the village of Fishbourne, Chichester in West Sussex. The large palace was built in the 1st century AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain on the site of a Roman army supply base established at the Claudian invasion in 43 AD. The rectangular palace surrounded formal gardens, the northern half of which have been reconstructed. There were extensive alterations in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, with many of the original black and white mosaics being overlaid with more sophisticated coloured work, including the perfectly preserved dolphin mosaic in the north wing. More alterations were in progress when the palace burnt down in around 270, after which it was abandoned.
Although local people had known of the existence of Roman remains in the area, it was not until 1960 that the archaeologist Barry Cunliffe first systematically excavated the site, which had been accidentally uncovered by Aubrey Barrett an engineer working for Portsmouth Water Company who was laying a new water main across a field. The Roman villa excavated by Cunliffe's team was so large that it became known as Fishbourne Roman Palace, and a museum was erected to protect and preserve some of the remains in situ. This is administered by the Sussex Archaeological Society.
In size, it is approximately equivalent to Nero's Golden House in Rome or to the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily, and in plan it closely mirrors the basic organisation of the emperor Domitian's palace, the Domus Flavia, completed in AD 92 upon the Palatine Hill in Rome. Fishbourne is by far the largest Roman residence known north of the Alps. At about 500 feet (150 m) square, it is larger in size than Buckingham Palace.
A modern museum has been built by the Sussex Archaeological Society, incorporating most of the visible remains including one wing of the palace. The gardens have been re-planted using authentic plants from the Roman period. A team of volunteers and professional archaeologists are involved in a continuing research archaeological excavation on the site of nearby, possibly military, buildings. The last dig was in 2002.
The first buildings on the site were granaries, apparently a supply base for the Roman army, constructed in the early part of the conquest in 43 AD. Later, two timber-frame buildings were constructed, one with clay and mortar floors and plaster walls which appears to have been a dwelling house of some comfort. These buildings were demolished in the AD 90s and replaced by a substantial stone-walled house, which included a courtyard garden with colonnades and a bath suite. It has been suggested [4] that the palace itself, incorporating the previous house in its south-east corner, was built in around c 73–75 AD. A reinterpretation of the ground plan and finds assemblage by Dr Miles Russell of Bournemouth University has suggested that, given the extremely close parallels with Domitian's imperial palace in Rome, its construction may more plausibly date to after AD 92.
With regard to who lived in the Fishbourne palace, the accepted theory, first proposed by Barry Cunliffe, is that the early phase of the palace was the residence of Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus (or Togidubnus), a pro-Roman local chieftain who was installed as king of a number of territories following the first stage of the conquest. Cogidubnus / Togidubnus is known from a reference to his loyalty in Tacitus's Agricola,[5] and from an inscription commemorating a temple dedicated to Neptune and Minerva found in nearby Chichester. Another theory is that it was built for another native, Sallustius Lucullus, a Roman governor of Britain of the late 1st century who may have been the son of the British prince Adminius.[7] Two inscriptions recording the presence of Lucullus have been found in nearby Chichester and the redating, by Miles Russell, of the palace to the early AD 90s, would fit far more securely with such an interpretation. If the palace were designed for Lucullus, then it may have only been in use for a few years, for the Roman historian Suetonius records that Lucullus was executed by the delusional emperor Domitian in or shortly after AD 93.[8]
Additional theories suggest that either Verica, a British client king of the Roman Empire in the years preceding the Claudian invasion was owner of the palace, or even one Tiberius Claudius Catuarus, whose gold signet ring was recently discovered.[2]
The palace outlasted the original owner and was extensively re-planned early in the 2nd century, being subdivided up into a series of lesser apartments. Further redevelopment was begun in the late 3rd century, but these alterations were incomplete when the north wing was destroyed in a fire c. 270 AD. The damage was too great to repair, and the palace was abandoned and later dismantled. It is not known whether the fire was accidental, set by coastal raiders or part of a more widespread period of disruption caused by the revolt of the 'British' emperor Carausius in the 280s AD.
The final phase palace comprised four large wings with colonnaded fronts, forming a square around a formal garden. The north and east wings each consisted of suites of rooms built around courtyards, with a monumental entrance in the middle of the east wing. In the north-east corner was an aisled assembly hall. The west wing contained state rooms, a large ceremonial reception room, and a gallery. The south wing contained the owner's private apartments. The palace also included as many as 50 mosaic floors, under-floor central heating and an integral bathhouse.
Passage2 Mammoth Kill (旧题)猛犸象的灭绝
1、 主要内容：
关于北美的大型哺乳动物猛犸象是为什么走上灭绝之路的。专家们分别提出3套理论来解释，但是很一哈没有一套理论有人信。第一种理论是人类过度打猎，叫做overkill model导致了大型动物的灭绝;第二种理论认为原因是deadly disease，是人类身上的传染病把动物给弄死的;第三种理论，把责任怪罪到气候不稳定上面considerable climate instability。然后这些理论各自有若干专家教授否定或肯定，根据这些不同意见出了个matching题(人名理论配对)其中有一个坚持支持过度捕猎的理论，结尾段他也出现了。
2、 题型分布：
填空题5题，配对题3题
3、 相关阅读材料：
The culprits behind the extinctions of a number of ice age giants have now been identified — woolly rhinos were apparently done in by climate change, while ancient bison were downed by both climate and human influences.
However, whatever drove woolly mammoths extinct remains elusive.
Giant mammals such as saber-toothed cats and cave bears once dominated the world. However, starting about 50,000 years ago, Eurasia lost approximately 36 percent of these "megafauna," while North America saw a decline of 72 percent.
The causes of these ice age extinctions remain hotly debated. Some have suggested that mighty swings in climate wreaked havoc on the habitats of these megafauna. Others note the rise of humanity coincided with the decline of these giants, proposing that we helped drive them into extinction.
Woolly genes
To help shed light on this mystery, scientists investigated DNA recovered from hundreds of bones of six of these megafauna species — the extinct woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), as well as the horse (wild Equus ferus and domestic Equus caballus), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), bison (the extinct steppe bison Bison priscus and the living Bison bison) and the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus).
Collecting these samples took investigators many field seasons, "enduring the harsh conditions of permafrost regions for weeks and months at a time," researcher Eline Lorenzen, a paleogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, told LiveScience. Extracting genetic data from the bones took seven years alone.
With these ancient DNA sequences, researchers could reconstruct aspects of the histories of these populations. For instance, the smaller a population is, the less genetically diverse its members likely are. The investigators could thus gauge how large the population of a species was based on its DNA and, in conjunction with thousands of fossils of these megafauna for which they knew the ages, they could estimate how this population might have changed in size over time.
Altogether, their findings helped model where these species were distributed across space in the past 50,000 years. They also estimated if and how the ranges of these megafauna overlapped with those of humans and how climate swings might have affected their habitats in that period.
Human and climate pressures
The declines in musk ox and woolly rhino populations were apparently linked largely with climate change. In contrast, the declines of the wild horse and steppe bison were apparently affected by expanding human populations in Europe and Asia; in addition, declines in their genetic diversity before humans came along suggest climate also have played a key role. Although humans and climate apparently both had some detrimental effects on reindeer, they remained largely unaffected by either, with their numbers remaining in the millions over the past 50,000 years.
"We spent a lot of time gauging our data, looking for similarities, since the species were found in the same areas and were under the same pressures from climate and humans. But we ended up finding out how different they were," Lorenzen said.
The end of the woolly mammoth remains mysterious. Their numbers remained high in Eurasia at least 10,000 years after first human contact, contradicting suggestions they were driven extinct by hunting or diseases we introduced — the "overkill" and "over-ill" models. The last woolly mammoths apparently retreated north where no humans were before dying off, but whether that was due to human encroachment or habitat reductions due to climate change remains frustratingly vague, researchers say.
"We don't have enough mammoth fossils from their final decline 6,000 years ago to estimate their population abundances and how they responded to overlap with humans, and we don't have enough paleoclimate data from then either," Lorenzen said. "The data's not conclusive for either scenario — it could be a combination of both."
The scientists detailed their findings online today (Nov. 2) in the journal Nature.
Passage3 The Role of Accident in Business
1、 主要内容：
本篇讲述商业中的意外的作用。
第一段列举了玉米片与报事贴的发明等例子说明意外在商业中有积极的作用;随后说明了一些公司对于意外的态度;最后提出利用意外的愿景。
2、 题型分布：
判断题6题，配对题，单选题2题
3、 概述：
本篇阅读属于社会科学类文章，是典型的较难理解的文章类型，虽然题型分配相对简单，但还是失分最多的一篇。失分原因主要在于一：文章位置，学生在做最后一篇时普遍心理素质较差，比较急功近利，所以文章疑难理解遍难以正常发挥;二是文章内容比较生疏。所以应对该类型的文章一定不能以看懂为目地，要巧妙运用定位技巧，并遵循所见即答案的小技巧，才能在快速完成的同时尽量提高正确率。