2013年3月2日托福阅读真题解析.docVIP

2013年3月2日托福阅读真题解析 　　第一篇： 　　铸币业minting 　　由于银矿的发现，铸币业开始产生。中世纪商人可以仅携带少量银币出行，促进了长途贸易的发展。由此，商业行会形成，商人之间mutual trust刺激credit机制的产生。 　　Medieval minting 　　Alterations in the flan (the coin disk, a term deriving from the French flatir, “to beat flat”) led to corresponding changes in the manufacture of dies. In about AD 220 the Sāsānian dynasty of Iran introduced the concept of thin flan coins, issues that were struck in relief on both sides. In order not to produce intolerable stresses in the dies, since the thinner the material the more force necessary to make it flow into the recesses of the dies design, the depth of relief on such coins was of necessity much shallower than with earlier currency. Such techniques spread by way of Byzantium to northern Europe, where the emperor Charlemagne struck thin flan deniers (small silver coins), or pennies, which became characteristic of both his own and neighbouring kingdoms. 　　The Franks and Saxons inherited an art that was formalistic rather than realistic, and this permitted their coin designs to be made up from a small number of standard elements that were reproducible using punches. It has been shown, for example, that the complete dies for all of the coin types of Edward the Confessor of England could be obtained from seven punches, giving individual wedges, crescents, pellets, and bars, each of which was independently struck to make up a legend and design. Consequently, a single workshop could supply the 70 or so contemporary English mints in a relatively short time. An experimental pair of dies took less than an hour to fabricate. Of course, many European dies were produced by a combination of punching and engraving, while engraving alone was typical of early Islamic and contemporary Oriental dies. With the advent of larger denominations, such as the gros tournois (based on the weight standard of Tours, in France) in the 13th century, more florid designs came to be preferred, but the elements of the royal crown, for example, o