An inference question tests what you can work out by connecting clues in the text. Read the sentences that link materials or steps to places, and ask what each clue actually shows. Then put the clues in a few words and predict a link that goes one step past them at most. A choice can reuse the text’s places and objects yet give them a cause or order the text never supports.
Hints
- Hint 1
Find the evidence tied to each place. Read the new findings after however, not only the original reason for calling the jars local.
- Hint 2
What can the clay, kiln finds, and pigment each tell you about where the materials came from or the work happened?
- Hint 3
Connect the physical clues with the trade records. What order of work could account for all the finds?
Step-by-step
Trace each stage to a place
Step 1Place the shaping and firing
The clay’s mineral signature points to deposits located far inland, so let’s start our inference with that source. Does a clay source also tell us where the jars were shaped and fired? Not on its own, but the kiln has unpainted jars that match the Selka jars in shape and firing marks. Those matching shapes and firing marks tie the work to that site, so shaping and firing likely happened inland.
- Step 2
Locate the painting
What about the painted finish? The blue pigment contains a compound found in paint-mixing bowls near the port but not among materials at the inland kiln. That contrast points to painting in the Selka area, because the evidence for mixing this paint is there and the matching inland jars are unpainted. The wave motifs resemble those in nearby murals, but that resemblance can’t place every stage of making the jars at the port.
- Step 3
Connect the stages through trade
How could the jars move between these stages? The records say goods traveled regularly between the two locations, so transporting jars connects the evidence without inventing a trade route. The choice saying then painted after they were transported to the Selka area makes that link and uses likely, since the text gives clues rather than directly describing how these jars were made. Choice B.