雅思阅读练习 A5

　　Garbage In，Garbage Out

　　There are many ways of obtaining an understanding of peoples behaviour. One of these

　　is to study the objects discarded by a community}objects used in daily lives. The

　　study of the refuse of a society is the basis for the science of archaeology in which

　　the lives and behaviour of past societies are minutely examined. .Some recent studies

　　have indicated the degree to which rubbish is socially defined.

　　For several years the University of Arizona,, USA has been running a Garbage! Project,

　　in which garbage is collected, sorted out and noted. It began in 1973with an

　　arrangement whereby the City of Tucson collected for analysis garbage from randomly

　　selected households in designated census collection districts. Since then the

　　researchers have studied other cities both in the USA and Mexico, refining their

　　techniques and procedures in response to the challenges of validating and

　　understanding the often unexpected results they have obtained. Garbage is sorted

　　according to an extremely detailed schedule, a range of data for each item is recorded

　　on a standardised coding form, and the researchers cross-tabulate their findings

　　with information from census and other social surveys.

　　This Project arose out of courses designed to teach students at the University the

　　principles of archaeological methodology and to sensitise them to the complex and

　　frequently surprising links between cultural assumptions and physical realities.

　　Often a considerable discrepancy exists between what people say they do -or even

　　think they do -and what they actually do. In one Garbage Project study none of the

　　Hispanic women in the sample admitted to using as much as a single

　　serving of commercially-prepared baby food, clearly reflecting cultural

　　expectations about proper mothering. Yet garbage from the Hispanic households with

　　infants contained just as many baby food containers as garbage from non-Hispanic

　　households with infants.

　　The Project leaders then decided to look not only at what was thrown away, but what

　　happened to it after that. In many counties waste is disposed of in landfills, the

　　rubbish is compacted and buried in the ground. So in 1987,the Project expanded its

　　activities to include the excavation of landaus across the United States Y-and Canada.

　　Surprisingly, no-one had ever attempted such excavations before.

　　The researchers discovered that far from being sites of chemical and biologicalactivity,theinteriorsofwastelandfillsareratherinactive,with the

　　possible exception of those established in swamps. Newspapers buried 20or more years

　　previously usually remained perfectly legible, and a remarkable amount of food

　　wastes of similar age also remained intact.

　　While discarded household products such as paints, pesticides, cleaners and