SAT Reading & Writing · Inferences
Because the repair required deliberate, careful drilling instead of simply discarding the broken pot, its presence on a vessel most…
Some broken prehistoric ceramic vessels have paired holes drilled precisely along the crack lines, consistent with the vessel having been stitched or bound back together with cord after breaking. Archaeologists disagree about what this pattern suggests about the vessels. Which choice most logically completes the text?
Because the repair required deliberate, careful drilling instead of simply discarding the broken pot, its presence on a vessel most strongly suggests that ______
Because the repair required deliberate, careful drilling instead of simply discarding the broken pot, its presence on a vessel most strongly suggests that ______
Answer and explanation
Answer: C: the vessel held enough value to its owner to be worth the effort of repair, though that value could reflect scarcity as easily as sentiment.
The observable fact is effort spent on repair; the inference has to stay as narrow as that fact allows. C draws the conclusion the evidence actually supports, that repair signals some form of value, while correctly flagging that "value" is ambiguous between sentimental attachment and practical scarcity, since the passage gives no way to distinguish those. A and B each invent a specific cause (weight, lack of skill) that the drilling pattern alone cannot establish. D overgeneralizes from an observed pattern in some vessels to a claim about all broken pottery from the period, which the evidence doesn't support.
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