Hi Jkjones!
Another good question
You are correct that this is a Resolve the Paradox EXCEPT question and you have a good prephrase--specifically, something that resolves this paradox would explain why the distribution of known lamps is skewed toward the late Upper Paleolithic period vs. the early Upper Paleolithic period. But let's look at why answer choice (A) resolves and answer choice (D) doesn't.
Answer choice (A) explains why we might have more known lamps from the late UP period by telling us that it's harder to identify artifacts from the early UP vs. late UP. That means that maybe they had just as many lamps in the early UP as in the late UP, and maybe we've even recovered just as many lamps from each part of the period, we just can't identify the ones from the early UP as well. Answer choice (A) is similar to answer choice (B) in that respect. Both of them are resolving the paradox by saying that the early UP humans and the late UP humans might have used the same amount of lamps, but we're not as good at recovering/identifying the early UP lamps as we are with the late UP lamps.
Answer choice (E), on the other hand, says that the Magdalenians produced more kinds of lamps than earlier cultures. At first glance, this looks like it resolves in a similar way to answer choice (C) by suggesting that the Magdalenians just made more lamps than the early UP humans so that's why we have more lamps from the late UP era. But read it closely! Answer choice (E) says they produced more KINDS of lamps, not necessarily more lamps. So maybe they made floor lamps and desk lamps and table lamps and clip-on lamps (okay, probably not those specific types of lamps considering the era we're talking about--I'm not an archaeologist!). But that doesn't mean they actually made more lamps. More variety does not equal more quantity. Therefore, answer choice (E) doesn't resolve the paradox because it doesn't actually give us a reason for why the QUANTITY of known lamps from the late UP would be higher. It just suggests we might have more variety from the late UP.
Hope that helps!
Best,
Kelsey
