During an excavation in coastal Turkey, archaeologists uncovered thousands of pottery fragments dating to the Bronze Age. The team carefully...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

Sentence 1:

• During an excavation in coastal Turkey,
• archaeologists
  • uncovered thousands of pottery fragments
    • dating to the Bronze Age.

Sentence 2:

• The team
  • carefully catalogued each piece
  • and later reconstructed approximately 150 complete vessels
    • from [?],
      • revealing intricate geometric patterns
        • characteristic of the region.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

'During an excavation in coastal Turkey, archaeologists uncovered thousands of pottery fragments dating to the Bronze Age.'

So we have:

• Archaeologists doing an excavation in Turkey
• They found thousands of pottery fragments
• These fragments date back to the Bronze Age

Now the second sentence continues:
'The team carefully catalogued each piece'

• 'The team' refers to the archaeologists mentioned in the first sentence
• They catalogued (made a careful record of) each piece
• 'Each piece' refers to each of those thousands of fragments they found

'and later reconstructed approximately 150 complete vessels from _____'

This is where we have the blank. Let's look at our choices:

• A: that
• B: them
• C: this
• D: it

To see what works here, let's think about what we're saying:

• They reconstructed complete vessels FROM something
• What would they reconstruct vessels from?
• They would reconstruct them from the pottery fragments they found!

Now let's understand what we need:

• The word in the blank needs to refer back to 'thousands of pottery fragments' from the first sentence
• 'Thousands of pottery fragments' is plural - we're talking about many fragments
• So we need a plural pronoun that refers to those fragments

Looking at our choices:

• 'them' is the plural pronoun that refers back to multiple things
• 'it' and 'this' are singular
• 'that' doesn't work naturally after 'from' when referring to concrete objects

So we need: them

The rest of the sentence says:
'revealing intricate geometric patterns characteristic of the region.'

This tells us:

• When they reconstructed these vessels from the fragments,
• They discovered (revealed) intricate geometric patterns
• These patterns were characteristic of that region

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Making Pronouns Match What They Refer To

When you use a pronoun to refer back to something mentioned earlier (called the antecedent in grammar terms), the pronoun must match that thing in number - meaning if you're referring to one thing, use a singular pronoun; if you're referring to multiple things, use a plural pronoun.

The Pattern:

Step 1: Identify what the pronoun refers back to

• In this question: "thousands of pottery fragments"

Step 2: Determine if that antecedent is singular or plural

• "Thousands of pottery fragments" = plural

Step 3: Choose a pronoun that matches

• Plural antecedent → plural pronoun
• "Them" is the plural object pronoun (used after prepositions like "from")

Examples:

• Singular: The archaeologist found a pottery fragment and examined it closely.
  • "it" refers to "a pottery fragment" (singular)
• Plural: The archaeologists found pottery fragments and examined them closely.
  • "them" refers to "pottery fragments" (plural)
• In our question: They reconstructed vessels from them (the fragments)
  • "them" refers to "thousands of pottery fragments" (plural)

Watch out for: Sometimes the antecedent appears in an earlier sentence, so you need to read carefully to identify what the pronoun is referring back to. In this question, the fragments are mentioned in sentence 1, but the pronoun appears in sentence 2.