A ruined structure found at Aqaba, Jordan, was probably a church, as

https://archive.archaeology.org/9811/newsbriefs/aqaba.html

The remains of the oldest known structure designed and built as a church have been found at the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba. Pottery, such as Tunisian red-slipped tableware, from the building's foundations dates the church to the late third or beginning of the fourth century, according to its excavator, North Carolina State University archaeologist S. Thomas Parker. That the building was a church is indicated by its eastward orientation, overall plan (a basilica with a central nave flanked by side aisles), and artifacts, such as glass oil lamp fragments.

Aqaba, Jordan



First glance

Most of the sentence is underlined and the beginning changes substantially across different choices, so look for global issues with Sentence Structure, Meaning, Modifiers, and Parallelism.

Issues

(1) Parallelism: X, as well as Y; X, but also Y

The original sentence contains nested parallelism:

(A) in its eastward orientation and by its overall plan, as well as artifacts

X (made up of A and B), as well as Y

Overall, the sentence contains X and Y elements that need to be made parallel; the X element itself consists of two sub-elements, A and B (and those two elements need to be parallel to each other).

This is an unusual structure but can be used correctly in a sentence, as long as the necessary elements are parallel.

In this case, the A and B elements are both prepositional phrases (in its eastward orientation; by its overall plan), so that portion is fine, but the Y element does not match the X element because artifacts found at the site is not a prepositional phrase. Eliminate choice (A) for faulty parallelism.

Scan the other answers for parallelism. Choices (B), (D), and (E) are fine, but choice (C) uses a faulty structure. It would be acceptable to say not only X, but also Y, but it is not acceptable to drop the not only portion of the construction; this parallelism marker requires some kind of negative language at the beginning in order to match the but also portion. (Note: you could also use alternative language, such as not just.)

(2) Meaning

All of these choices sound fairly awkward but only two have definite meaning problems. The core sentence for choice (B) is as follows: A ruined structure was indicated by its orientation, plan, and artifacts. The structure itself, however, was not indicated by anything. Rather, these clues indicated that the structure was probably a church. Eliminate choice (B) for faulty meaning.

Answer (D) employs a structure that creates a false meaning: A ruined structure was probably a church, as indicates its orientation and plan, as well as the artifacts. First, consider the difference between saying indicates X and indicated by X.

She indicates that she hates pizza.

Her hatred of pizza is indicated by her refusal to eat it.

The active form indicates X requires the subject to perform the action of indicating. This active form is used in choice (D), so what is the subject of indicates? The structure? But the structure doesn’t actively indicate anything. Rather certain pieces of evidence indicate that the structure was probably a church. The sentence mentions the structure first, though, so the sentence must use the passive structure: the fact that the structure was probably a church is indicated by certain pieces of evidence.

The Correct Answer

Correct answer (E) employs proper nested parallelism. The A and B sub-elements are both nouns (orientation and plan) and the overall X and Y elements are both prepositional phrases (by its orientation and plan; by the artifacts).

The overall sentence structure is fine as well, though it might seem very awkward. It may sound a little better to you if you replace the word That at the beginning with The fact that.

This is an extremely difficult question—the test writers purposely made the correct answer sound just as bad as the others so that you couldn’t rely on your ear for this one. If, in future, you hit a problem in which all five answers sound terrible to you, consider guessing and moving on.