Archaeologists seeking the location of a legendary siege and destructi

Certainly, vasuca10.

I would agree that this question is tricky... and in a way that is unusual (though not completely unseen) for official questions. The argument doesn't quite state the conclusion, but rather, leaves it pretty powerfully implied. There's actually another question of the same stem that asks us to infer the conclusion... so it's almost as if they're hoping you'll take that step and *then* find what weakens this inferred conclusion. That said, we can almost think of this question as a "plan of action" question, wherein the "conclusion" is the objective or goal of the archaeologists and the "plan" is the evidence used to achieve that goal. We want something that tells us that the archaeologists may not be able to reliably find the site/period of the city's siege using the archaeological artifacts found in specific layers of the mound. (Though the argument seems to point more specifically to whether or not we can use the middle layer artifacts to conclude that the siege did not take place in the middle layer.)

The archaeologists are trying to find the location of the cite where this city was destroyed. They use the evidence that "The bottom of the middle layer contains some pieces of pottery of type 3, known to be from a later period than the time of the destruction of the city, but the lower layer does not." So, they are using this evidence to conclude that the destroyed city must not have been located at the middle layer of the mound (since evidence exists pointing to a later civilization at that time and location). If you're having a hard time connecting those elements, check out this inference example of the same stem.

So, we're looking for something that tells us that just because this evidence of a later period at the middle layer of mound 3 exists, we don't necessarily know that the siege could not have taken place at this period, and thus this layer of archaeological evidence.

Let's take a look at the answers:



Hmm... if we have reason to believe that the evidence obtained by these archaeologists came from a higher layer and had some other way to make their way to the layer in which they were found - this weakens the conclusion that this layer could not have been the site of the siege. For instance, perhaps the evidence of the later period *was* in the upper layer, or even at the time the surface of the ground, but the burrowing of these animals dropped the artifacts down into a layer that does not represent the time period the artifacts were from. This weakens the force of the evidence, telling us that we cannot necessarily use the location of the artifacts to connect to the time period of the layers of the mound. This one looks great! Let's have a look at the others!



This seems to strengthen the idea that the siege must have taken place at a lower level than the middle layer... so it certainly doesn't weaken the force of the existing evidence. This answer provides additional, aligning evidence! Definitely not what we want.



Okay... so there were stone pieces from an older wall incorporated in the remains of s middle-layer wall. Did they borrow found remains at the time to construct the new wall? Preserve artifacts from an older time within those walls? This one doesn't seem to connect to the siege timeline at all, and definitely doesn't tell us "we can't necessarily say the siege didn't occur during the middle layer" even though "The bottom of the middle layer contains some pieces of pottery of type 3, known to be from a later period than the time of the destruction of the city, but the lower layer does not." We need something that specifically weakens the force of our evidence. This one's out.



Totally irrelevant to us here. The fact that both layers show evidence of fire-based destruction does nothing to tell us whether the evidence previously referenced in the argument supports when the siege could have (and more specifically, could not have) taken place.



Like (B), this one seems to strengthen the idea that the siege took place during the lower level - the opposite of what we're looking for here.

We want something that tells us that it does not make sense to use the evidence given to conclude the period and location of the siege. Of our options, only (A) does so, as it tells us that the evidence presented might not give a reliable indication of the layer in which it should rightfully belong.

So, if we recognize that we need to weaken the force of the evidence that "The bottom of the middle layer contains some pieces of pottery of type 3, known to be from a later period than the time of the destruction of the city, but the lower layer does not" to draw conclusions about the layer of the siege or, more specifically, to rule out a layer - only (A) provides us with a fact that would weaken this connection.

I hope this helps!