RC Question 22 Explanation
DISCUSSION: In the second paragraph, the author says: our only evidence for the resource procurement theory is ethnography. And then they say that other ethnographic evidence supports a different theory.
What kind of evidence is ethnographic evidence? It’s circumstantial evidence. That means: indirect evidence which is suggestive but not conclusive. The passage doesn’t say this explicitly, but you can figure it out by knowing the definition of circumstantial and realizing that the ethnographic evidence described fits into that definition.
I mention this because several of the answers use circumstantial evidence. Knowing that ethnographic evidence = circumstantial helps you relate it to the answers.
(Note: I initially thought that the word “circumstantial” in line 9 explicitly said that ethnography was circumstantial. But that line only refers to archaeological evidence, not ethnographic.)
In the answers, the prosecution is the resource procurement theory, and the author’s pathway theory is the defense.
___________
- Neither side has direct evidence. That would be, for example, direct archaeological evidence showing how clearings were used in the Mesolithic.
- Physical evidence = archaeological evidence. Both sides lack archaeological evidence.
- It’s true that there’s no direct evidence. But, the author didn’t leave their argument at “The procurement theory has only circumstantial evidence, so it has no direct evidence”. Instead, the author made a competing case for a different theory. Here, the analogy would be the author raising a case of their own.
- This is entirely different. This would be as though the main professor supporting the resource procurement theory had been discredited due to fraud on their part.
- CORRECT. This parallels. Circumstantial evidence = ethnographic evidence. So:
“The resource procurement theory relies almost entirely on ethnographic evidence [lines 18-20]. But other ethnographic evidence supports the author’s own theory [lines 24-27].”
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