Excavations at Huaca de la Luna in Peru uncovered ceremonial vessels from an ancient civilization, _______ renowned for their sophisticated...

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

• Excavations at Huaca de la Luna in Peru
  • uncovered ceremonial vessels
    • from an ancient civilization,
      • the Moche (?) (CE 100-800) (?),
        • renowned for their sophisticated irrigation systems.
• Archaeologists believe
  • these artifacts date to the height of the culture's power in the region.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start from the beginning:

'Excavations at Huaca de la Luna in Peru uncovered ceremonial vessels from an ancient civilization,'

So archaeologists dug at a site in Peru and found ceremonial vessels. These vessels came from an ancient civilization.

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank:
'from an ancient civilization, _______ renowned for their sophisticated irrigation systems.'

The sentence is telling us which civilization: 'the Moche' along with when they existed: '(CE 100-800)'.

Let's look at our choices - they all have the same words, but the commas are in different places around the date in parentheses.

To see what punctuation works here, let's understand what's happening in this phrase:

• 'the Moche (CE 100-800)'
  • 'the Moche' identifies which civilization
  • '(CE 100-800)' gives us the time period in parentheses
• 'renowned for their sophisticated irrigation systems'
  • This adds another piece of descriptive information about the Moche
  • It's telling us what they were known for

What do we notice about the structure here?

• The date '(CE 100-800)' is already set off by parentheses
  • Parentheses are punctuation marks that set off extra information
  • When something is in parentheses, we don't add commas right before or after the parentheses - the parentheses already do that job
• But 'renowned for their sophisticated irrigation systems' is a descriptive phrase that comes after
  • This phrase needs to be set off with a comma
  • It's adding extra description about the Moche

So we need: no comma before the parentheses, but yes comma after: 'the Moche (CE 100-800), renowned...'

The correct answer is Choice B.

Now let's read the second sentence to complete the picture:

'Archaeologists believe these artifacts date to the height of the culture's power in the region.'

This tells us that these ceremonial vessels are from when the Moche civilization was at its most powerful.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Punctuating Parenthetical Information

When you include information in parentheses (called parenthetical information in grammar terms), the parentheses themselves set off that extra information. You don't add commas immediately before or after the parentheses - that would be redundant punctuation.

Basic pattern:

• Without parentheses needing commas: The ceremony (which lasted two hours) was beautiful.
• NOT: The ceremony, (which lasted two hours), was beautiful.

However: If there would naturally be a comma in that location for another grammatical reason, you DO include it:

• The ceremony was long, and the reception (which started at 6 PM) was elegant.
• The comma after "long" is there to separate two independent clauses, not because of the parentheses

In our question:

• "the Moche (CE 100-800), renowned for their sophisticated irrigation systems"
• NO comma before (CE 100-800) - the parentheses handle the separation
• YES comma after (CE 100-800) - this comma sets off the descriptive phrase "renowned for..." which adds extra information about the Moche
• That comma would be needed there whether or not the date was in parentheses

Think of it this way: Parentheses are already a strong form of punctuation. Adding commas right next to them is like double-punctuating - unnecessary and incorrect.