Archaeologist: Recent mass-spectrometry analysis of Late Bronze Age bronze artifacts recovered in southern Scandinavia revealed that their tin content matches the isotopic composition of tin deposits found exclusively in the Iberian Peninsula and southwestern Britain. Because copper ore was abundant locally in Scandinavian deposits, historians had assumed that Scandinavian metalworking communities operated within a self-sustaining regional exchange network. However, the presence of British and Iberian tin in these artifacts demonstrates that Scandinavian societies engaged in direct, long-distance maritime trade voyages to the Atlantic coast of Europe during this period.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the archaeologist's argument depends?
- AScandinavian maritime vessels were technologically superior in cargo capacity to the vessels constructed by communities residing along the Atlantic coast.
- BDirect maritime voyages were the only mechanism by which any raw materials from southwestern Britain and Iberia could reach regions outside of western Europe during the Late Bronze Age.
- The Atlantic tin present in the Scandinavian bronze artifacts was not acquired entirely through a series of intermediate overland trade transactions across continental Europe.Cevap
- DIf a Bronze Age society in northern Europe engaged in direct long-distance maritime trade, its metalworkers must have utilized imported tin rather than local mineral resources.
- ELate Bronze Age Scandinavian metalworkers had completely exhausted their local copper reserves before attempting to manufacture alloys using imported ores.