01 the dover bronze答案及定位分布.pdfVIP

The Dover Bronze-Age Boat

A beautifully p boat, made around 3,000 years ago and discovered by chance in a muddy hole, has had a

profound impact on archaeological research.

It was 1992. In England, workmen were building a new road through the heart of Dover（Q1）, to

connect the ancient port and the Channel Tunnel, which, when it opened just two years later, was to be

the first land link ween Britain and Europe for over 10,000 years. A small team from the Canterbury

Archaeological Trust (CAT) worked alongside the workmen, recording new discoveries brought to light

by the machines.

At the base of a deep shaft six metres below the modern streets a wooden structure was revealed

（Q10）. Cleaning away the waterlogged site overlying the timbers, archaeologists realized its true

nature. They had found a prehistoric boat, p by the type of sediment in which it was buried. It

was then named the Dover Bronze-Age Boat.

About nine metres of the boat’s length was recovered; one end lay beyond the excavation and had to

be left. What survived consisted essentially of four intricately carved and stitched to the others. The

seams had been made watertight by pads of moss, fixed by wedges and yew stitches（Q11）.

The timers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity when it was

abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There was also evidence for missing

upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, but had been deliberately discarded, dismantled and

broken（Q6）. Perhaps it had been ‘ritually killed’ at of its life, like other Bronze-Age objects.

With hindsight, it