LSAT 130, Section 2, RC Passage 1, Archaeological Remains

RC Passage 1 Explanation

PASSAGE TEXT: Traditional sources of evidence about ancient history are archaeological remains and surviving texts

Paragraph Summaries

1. There are many difficulties in studying ancient textiles produced by women. Cloth decays, archaeologists threw away loom weights. Ancient texts rarely mention crafts. Nonetheless, researchers have made much progress.
2. New developments have advanced knowledge. i. Technology such as radiocarbon dating and infrared photography improve the study of past materials. ii. Archaeology has become scientific, and archaeologists now aim to preserve all objects.
3. Recreating ancient technology has also helped archaeologists test hypotheses. For example, archaeologists were able to figure out that making a dress for a small statue would have taken nine months.

Analysis

This passage is heavy on details. You needn’t try to remember them all. Instead, you should remember where they were discussed, so that you’re able to confirm things once a question requires it. I’d say the overall structure is:

There are difficulties in studying crafts, but we made progress.

Technology and a change in archaeological attitudes helped.

Recreating past technology has helped test hypotheses.

One overarching theme is that archaeologists used to consider crafts unimportant, and they also used to throw away things from digs that didn’t seem important. For example, archaeologists didn’t throw away clay blobs because they were linked to crafts. Instead, they just thought the blobs looked useless, and didn’t care to find out if they were important.

Later, scientific archaeologists preserved everything, and also asked questions to find out what blobs were used for. They also began to take more interest in figuring out all aspects of ancient society, such as how crafts were made.