CAE (Advanced Exam) Listening Test 3

Part 3
15 B 16 D 17 C 18 B 19 C 20 A

You will hear an interview with an archaeologist called Julian Radwinter.
For questions 15–20, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear.
In the exam, you have 70 seconds to look at Part 3.

Interviewer: My guest today’s the archaeologist Julian Radwinter, who works at Dunstan
University. Julian, welcome.
Julian: Hi.
Interviewer: Tell us about how you first got involved in archaeology – what attracted you to it.
Julian: Well, it all started when a team of archaeologists came to dig up the field next to my
parents’ farm one summer. It was an exciting prospect for a teenager and despite
strict instructions from my father not to make a nuisance of myself, it wasn’t long
before I was roped in to lend a hand – on a purely voluntary basis, of course.
There’s always a need for someone to do the fetching and carrying on such digs –
and I was full of questions. That’s the sort of boy I was, and I guess it broke up the
day for those involved in the more tedious work! Anyway, I was in my element and
from then on, there was no question what subject I was going to study at university.
Interviewer: And does the subject still hold the same fascination?
Julian: Well yes. I mean, on that dig some strangely shaped metal objects were unearthed,
clearly carbon dateable to the time of the buildings they’d already found traces of.
But this object didn’t seem to fit in with anything they’d found. And this is exactly the
kind of puzzle that makes the subject so gripping – you have a fragmented object
and some contextual information but clearly pieces of information are missing and
need to be filled in by the archaeologist. You have to make assumptions –
interpretations based on the evidence you’ve got – and that often involves
eliminating possibilities – ticking off the things it might be, but clearly isn’t. At the
end of the day it’s still mostly conjecture – so the debate continues.
Interviewer: Do you think archaeology gets the recognition it deserves as a profession?
Julian: Well, people think of archaeology and they think of ancient civilisations, buried
treasure and all sorts of romantic notions, often stemming from the mythology
surrounding startling twentieth-century discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean
and the Nile valley. All that’s fuelled by the image projected by certain feature films
– that beguile people into the idea that archaeology’s a glamorous discipline. I have
no problem with any of that, but everyday archaeology actually involves a lot of
painstaking gathering of data, often in far from romantic surroundings – you get
cold, wet and dirty – and the discoveries are mostly small and cumulative rather
than dramatic, which is the point that the world at large really tends to miss.
Nonetheless, it is a science, and it has a lot to tell us and the data is actually
surprisingly accessible to ordinary people in the way that a lot of science isn’t. 

Interviewer: Which brings us neatly on to your own current research post. Why have you
decided to concentrate your efforts on southeastern England?
Julian: Well, most of my colleagues are jetting off around the world – digging in remote
spots in faraway places. It calls for a lot of organisation and involves all manner of
setbacks and frustrations, not to mention tedious long-haul flights and endless
inoculations. But I have none of those problems. Indeed, now that archaeology is
becoming much more oriented towards the collection and analysis of data, rather
than the just locating and digging up key sites, we come to realise just how much
England has to offer. Basically, with a relatively modest budget, we can gather far
more relevant data here than in many of the places that have been the typical focus
of archaeological activity.
Interviewer: But why is that, and what is it that you’re hoping to find?
Julian: Well, for the last two thousand years, and probably long before that too,
southeastern England has undoubtedly been one of the most densely inhabited
parts of the world. There was a lot of human activity here and the evidence is to be
found beneath our feet. The land’s been intensively farmed since the Iron Age and
most modern-day villages have been continuously inhabited for over a thousand
years – some much longer. But I find it tantalising to think that you’ve only got to dig
a hole somewhere in a settlement, and you’ll probably uncover data that’ll reveal
how people lived and the way different things influenced their way of life – be it
political changes, climate change, disease or whatever.
Interviewer: Finally Julian, you’re taking part in a project that looks at the role of humour in
archaeology. That sounds intriguing – tell us a bit about that.
Julian: Well traditional storytelling, the passing on of ideas and deep cultural knowledge is
one of those things that we’re tending to lose with the digital age – and it struck me
that it’s there in archaeology itself. There’s often a mismatch between the dry
reports written up after successful digs and the warmth and intimacy that is built up
within a team. Basically, you’re all living and working cheek by jowl for long periods
and a kind of camaraderie develops – the telling of anecdotes around the campfire
after a long day’s digging is full of humour – but also full of the folk memory of
archaeology itself. The project I’m involved in seeks to capture and preserve some
of that rich fund of humour and anecdote – so that it can be preserved for future
generations along with the archaeological evidence itself.
Interviewer: Fascinating, thank you very much ...