#12

[jones.mchandler]

Correct Answer: D

I'm having trouble finding the support for D. I chose E. E seems to be supported by the text in the last paragraph during the author's thought experiment about a more practical policy towards excavating such cultural antiquities. Particularly lines 48-51 seemed to support E, by imagining a system where people who find such artifacts register them with the state.

If someone could help me read, it would be greatly appreciated.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting jones.mchandler

First, it sounds like you're kickstarting the right process for an RC Inference question: hunt down a line reference or citation to support the answer.

All five of our answer choices here have to do with who owns/excavates/etc these "cultural antiquities". We have a few locations in the passage that touch on this.

1) UNESCO Doctrine: cultural antiquities = property of the culture (lines 18-19). Not author view
2) some countries: cultural antiquities = state property (lines 24-25). Not author view
3) new idea: licensed excavations / registered objects / taxed exports. Author idea

You honed in on paragraph 3 for the author view, and that's awesome! However, you didn't quite take the analysis far enough. The author says two important things about this new idea:

i) this would be better than what actually happened (lines 55-56)
ii) the excavations would be "less well conducted" and "less informative" than "proper, professionally administered excavations by accredited archeologists". (lines 51-54)

This imagined new system of the author's requires not only registration (discussed in (E)), but also licensing of the excavation itself - some random Joe digging things up all on his own would not necessarily fit the bill! But there's a bigger problem - even this new idea, in all its detail, is not what the author thinks the ideal scenario actually is. We'll return to this in a moment...

(D) looks odd at first glance, but taking lines 51-54 to heart, we see that the author is pointing out that professional excavations are still superior to this new idea. The new idea isn't the best scenario possible, it's just better than what eventually happened in Mali. If professional excavations are even better than this 'new idea, then surely the author would agree that we should go that route "when possible"!

There's an additional, albeit small, additional issue in (E): the wording says that items "belong" to certain people, while (D) says something "should" occur. There's a fundamental syntax shift here between describing things, supposedly, as they are and describing thing as the author thinks they should be. Even if the author agreed that (E) was how thing ought to be, the author is well aware that this is not actually how things are.

For completeness sake, let's take a glance at the remaining wrong answer choices:

(A) This is similar to the UNESCO views in paragraph 2, not the author's (though "museum" is unsupported regardless)

(B) This is close to the strengthened UNESCO view of the countries in paragraph 2, not the author's view.

(C) The value of the items is not presented as a reason (by the author or anyone else) why they should or should not be owned by anyone.

You had a good start in hunting down the appropriate line reference. You identified the author's 'new idea' in paragraph 3, but you needed to take it one step further and hone in on what the author believed about this new idea - better than what actually happened in Mali, but necessarily the ideal situation.

Please let me know if that helps clear up a few things!

[jones.mchandler]

There's an additional, albeit small, additional issue in (E): the wording says that items "belong" to certain people, while (D) says something "should" occur. There's a fundamental syntax shift here between describing things, supposedly, as they are and describing thing as the author thinks they should be. Even if the author agreed that (E) was how thing ought to be, the author is well aware that this is not actually how things are.

This particularly helps clear up why E is in fact incorrect. Thank you so much for that response!