Reading Comprehension

PT130 · S2 · P1 · Q7 Advances in Archaeology

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Traditional sources of evidence about ancient history are archaeological remains and surviving texts.

Topic

How researchers have learned about ancient textiles and the women who produced them despite the limitations of traditional evidence.

Framework

Problem/Solution. The passage opens with the obstacles facing the study of ancient textile production, then walks through several ways researchers have nonetheless made progress.

Main Point

Despite the perishable nature of cloth and the silence of ancient texts, researchers have learned a great deal about ancient textiles and their makers by combining technological advances, a new preservationist mindset in archaeology, and reconstruction of ancient production methods.

P1: The obstacles, plus a thesis

Cloth perishes; loom weights looked like blobs of clay and were thrown away; ancient texts barely mention textile-making and use archaic terms when they do. Yet — and this is the thesis — researchers have learned a great deal anyway, by piecing together disparate sources.

P2: Technology + a philosophical shift

Modern methods (radiocarbon dating, infrared photography, isotope fingerprinting, thin-layer chromatography) extract information from minute remains. Archaeology itself has shifted from artifact-collecting to scientific inquiry, with a new precept of preserving everything — which is how a 5,000-year-old linen shirt was found in a previously stored Petrie collection.

P3: Recreating ancient production

Researchers have advanced the field by reconstructing ancient production methods — confirming, for example, that those clay blobs were loom weights, and resolving which of two Athena statues received the festival dress (the small one, since at ancient looms the dress would have taken nine months for the small statue, not the large one as previously assumed).

Which one of the following most accurately describes the function of the first paragraph in relation to the rest of the passage?

Correct
A particularly difficult archaeological problem
Why this is right
P1 spends most of its space on the obstacles facing textile research (perished cloth, discarded loom weights, unhelpful texts). The final sentence,"Yet despite these obstacles, researchers have learned a great deal", signals that P2 and P3 will describe how those obstacles were overcome. This answer describes the main contents of P1 while correctly describing its relationship to the other paragraphs.
Skill tested: Paragraph Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
84% picked this
A previously neglected body of
Wrong View
The passage doesn't ever talk about any neglected evidence (other than the discarded loom weights, which are not a central character). The author is instead just saying we barely have any evidence, not that we've neglected an entire body of evidence. The only view the passage ever tries to cast doubt on is one old belief that a dress was intended for a large statue (now we think it was intended for a small statue). This was a tiny example of a discovery we've made, not a central part of the passage.
7% picked this
The fruitfulness of new technologically
Wrong Emphasis
P1 doesn't describe the new methods at all; those are introduced in P2. And at no point does the passage make an argument that seemingly insignificant remains out to be preserved.
4% picked this
The findings of recent archaeological
Unsupported
Paragraph 1 doesn't report on any recent findings. It talks about the challenges faced by this field of historical inquiry. And the passage never claims that the role of women in ancient cultures has been underestimated by archaeologists.
3% picked this
A recently developed branch of
Wrong View
Out of Scope (new branch / other branches) P1 never discusses a newly developed branch of archaeological research. We're talking about the branch that studies ancient textile making and talking about the Old challenges they've faced vs. the New successes they've had. But there never was a new branch of archaeology invented. And there is no argument that other branches should adopt these methods.
2% picked this

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