【正文】 erican Southwest were notable for their “great houses”, massive stone buildings that contain hundreds of rooms and often stand three or four stories high. Archaeologists have been trying to determine how the buildings were used. While there is still no universally agreed upon explanation, there are three peting theories. One theory holds that the Chaco structures were purely residential, with each housing hundreds of people. Supporters of this theory have interpreted Chaco great houses as earlier versions of the architecture seen in more recent Southwest societies. In particular, the Chaco houses appear strikingly similar to the large wellknown “apartment building” at Taos, New Mexico, in which many people have been living for centuries. A second theory contends that the Chaco structures were used to store food supplies. One of the main crops of the Chaco people was grain maize, which could be stored for long periods of time without spoiling and could serve as a longlasting supply of food. The supplies of maize had to be stored somewhere, and the size of the great house would make them very suitable for the purpose. A third theory proposes that houses were used as ceremonial centers. Close to one house, called Pueblo Alto, archaeologists identified an enormous mound formed by a pile of old material. Excavations of the mound revealed deposits containing a surprisingly large number of broken pots. This finding has been interpreted as evidence that people gathered at Pueblo Alto for special ceremonies. At the ceremonies, they ate festive meals and then discarded the pots in which the meals had been prepared or served. Such ceremonies have been documented for other Native American cultures. 10 Listening Unfortunately none of the arguments about what the Chaco great houses were used for is convincing. First, sure, from the outside, the great houses look like later and Native American apartment buildings. But the inside of the great house casts serious doubt on the idea that many people lived there. I’ll explain. If hundreds of people were living in the great houses, then there would have to be many fireplaces, where each family did its daily cooking, but there are very few fireplaces. In one of the largest great houses, there were fireplaces for only around ten families. Yet there were enough rooms in the great house for more than a hundred families, so the primary function of the houses couldn’t have been residential. Second, the idea that the great houses were used to store grain maize is unsupported by evidence. It may sound plausible that large empty rooms were used for storage, but excavations of the great houses have not uncovered many traces of maize or maize containers. If the great houses were used for storage, why isn’t there more spilled maize on the floor? Why aren’t there more remains of big containers? Third, the idea that the great houses were ceremonial centers isn’t well supported either. You know that mound at Pueblo Alto? It contains lots of other materials besides broken pots, stuff you wouldn’t expect from ceremonies. For example, there are large quantities of building materials, sands, stones, even construction tools. This suggests that the mound is just a trash heap of construction material, stuff that was thrown away or not used up when a house was being built. The pots in the pile could be regular trash too, leftover from the meals of the construction workers. So the Pueblo Alto mound is not good evidence that the great houses were used for special ceremonies. 11 Integrated writing 6—online encyclopedias Reading Communal online encyclopedias represent one of the latest resources to be found on the inter. They are in many respects like traditional printed encyclopedias collections of articles on various subjects. What is specific to these online encyclopedias, however, is that any inter user can contribute a new article or make an editorial change in an existing one. As a result, the encyclopedia is authored by the whole munity of inter users. The idea might sound attractive, but the munal online encyclopedias have several important problems that make them much less valuable than traditional, printed encyclopedias. First, contributors to a munal online encyclopedia often lack academic credentials, thereby making their contributions partially informed at best and downright inaccurate in many cases. Traditional encyclopedias are written by trained experts who adhere to standards of academic rigor that nonspecialists cannot really achieve. Second, even if the original entry in the online encyclopedia is correct, the munal nature of these online encyclopedias gives unscrupulous users and vandals or hackers the opportunity to fabricate, delete, and corrupt information in the encyclopedia. Once changes have been made to the original text, an unsuspecting user cannot tell the entry has been tampered with. None of this is possible with a traditional encyclopedia. Third, the munal encyclopedias focus too frequently can in too great a depth, on trivial and popular topics, which creates a false impression of what is important and what is not. A child doing research for a school project may discover that a major historical event receives as much attention in an online encyclopedia as, say, a singlerunning television program. The traditional encyclopedia provides a considered view of what topics to include or exclude and contains a sense of proportion that online “democratic” munal encyclopedias do not. 12 Listening The munal online encyclopedia will probably never be perfect, but that’s a small price to pay for what it does offer, the criticisms in the reading are largely the result of prejudice against and ignorance about how far online encyclopedias have e. First, errors. 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