词汇题：
Pondered= thought about
Inconclusive= not decisive
Fundamental= basic
Mandated=required
Signify=indicate
Ceased=stopped
Promoted=encouraged
Alleged=supposed
Dispersed=scattered
Function=purpose
Controversial=debatable
Elaborate=well developed
第一篇：
题材划分：考古类
主要内容：人们在canyon上发现了big house是在很短的时间内出现的，大约是在11世纪，后来停止建造，在13世纪又被遗弃了。Big house非常大，有很多层，需要从很远的地方运来木材，以及collective work，所以17世纪以前，考古学家都以为这里存在森林，然而它所在的位置今天是非常干旱和恶劣的，于是研究人员推测这个地方以前是个绿洲，吸引了非常多的人过来盖big house. 但是建筑学家研究发现，它处在一个网状的结构中心，周围有居民的房子，又发现了一些遗迹和器皿，因此推断它有宗教用途。但是地质学家研究发现那段时间有大量的水资源流向那里，宗教用途的推断受到质疑，研究者认为是因为这个地方非常适合农业，所以才在这里盖big house.
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相关知识背景：
A great house is a large house or mansion with luxurious appointments and great retinues of indoor and outdoor staff, especially those of the turn of the 20th century (i.e., the late Victorian or Edwardian era in the United Kingdom and the Gilded Age in the United States). Examples include the English country house, the "stately homes of England" and the homes of various "millionaires' row" (or "millionaires' mile") in some
U.S. cities such as Newport, Rhode Island. In Ireland, the term big house is usual for the houses of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. By some reports, the summer homes of the wealthy at Newport averaged four servants per family member. There was often an elaborate hierarchy among staff, domestic workers in particular. It was considered declassé to refer to one's own townhouses, estates or villas (or those of friends) as mansion sand modern etiquette books still advise that the terms house, big house or great house be used instead.
As in the past, today's great houses are limited to heads of state, the very rich, or those who have inherited them; few in the developed world are staffed at the level of past centuries. The International Guild of Butlers estimates that the annual salaries of a 20-25 person household staff total in excess of US$1,000,000.
In countries with supplies of cheap domestic labor, the middle classes are still able to afford household help, but not approaching the numbers involved in the running of a great house.
第二篇
题材划分：宗教文化类
主要内容：主要讲解Greek’s sacred groves and parks. 古希腊哲学家研究人与自然的关系，引用了一位哲学家的话，说明natural 和spirit之间的关系，与艺术和人为修饰的东西相反。古希腊很崇尚自然，觉得自然是很神圣的，树是有非常重要的意义，不仅古希腊文化，树木也有spiritual meaning。Grove的地址通常是在一些小地方(比如洞穴之类)，并不是像哲学家所说的是很虚幻的存在。Sacred groves被希腊人认为是神明的住所，他们会把它围起来保护好，擅闯的人会被以神怒威胁，经过grove的动物也会被拿去祭祀。
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相关知识背景：
A sacred grove or sacred woods are any grove of trees of special religious importance to a particular culture. Sacred groves were most prominent in the Ancient Near East and prehistoric Europe, but feature in various cultures throughout the world. They were important features of the mythological landscape and cult practice of Celtic, Baltic, Germanic, ancient Greek, Near Eastern, Roman, and Slavic polytheism, and were also used in India, Japan, and West Africa. Examples of sacred groves include the Greco-Roman temenos, the Norse h?rgr, and the Celtic nemeton, which
was largely but not exclusively associated with Druidic practice. During the Northern Crusades, there was a common practice of building churches on the sites of sacred groves. Ancient holy trees still exist in the English countryside and are mentioned often in folklore and fairytales.
The most famous sacred groves in mainland Greece was the oak grove at Dodona. Outside the walls of Athens, the site of the Academy was a sacred grove of olive trees, still recalled in the phrase "the groves of Academe."
In central Italy, the town of Nemi recalls the Latin nemus Aricinum, or "grove of Ariccia", a small town a quarter of the way around the lake. In Antiquity the area had no town, but the grove was the site of one of the most famous of Roman cults and temples: that of Diana Nemorensis, a study of which served as the seed for Sir James Frazer's seminal work on the anthropology of religion, The Golden Bough. A sacred grove behind the House of the Vestal Virgins on the edge of the Roman Forum lingered until its last vestiges were burnt in the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE.
In the town of Spoleto, Umbria, two stones from the late third century BCE, inscribed in archaic Latin, established punishments for the profanation of the woods dedicated to Jupiter (Lex Luci Spoletina) have survived; they are preserved in the National Archeological Museum of Spoleto.[3] The Bosco Sacro (literally sacred grove) in the garden of Bomarzo, Italy, lends its associations to the uncanny atmosphere.
The city of Marseilles, a Greek colony, had a sacred grove so close by it that Julius Caesar had it cut down to facilitate his siege. In Pharsalia, the poet Lucan dramatized it as a place where sunlight could not reach through the branches, where no animal or bird lived, where the wind did not blow, but branches moved on their own, where human sacrifice was practiced, in a clear attempt to dramatize the situation and distract from the sacrilege entailed in its destruction.
第三篇...
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