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Undeterred by thoughts of ghosts or goblins, and exhilarated by the dazzling wealth of their find, the workmen eagerly shared out chunks of the gold sheet, with the farmer taking the largest pieces.
鬼怪的傳說并沒有嚇退他們，閃閃發光的財寶令他們興奮不已，熱切地瓜分了黃金碎片，一個佃農得到了最大的一份。
It would have been easy for the story to end there.
故事原本很可能就到此為止了。
The year was 1833, and burials from a distant past, however exotic, enjoyed little legal protection.
在一八三三年，不論多奇特的遠古墓葬都很難得到法律保護，
The isolated location of the burial site, near the town of Mold, not far from the north coast of Wales, meant that the wider world could easily have continued in ignorance of its existence.
更何況墓葬地處威爾士北岸的莫爾德鎮附近，位置偏遠，外面世界的人們很容易忽略它的存在。一切多虧了當地牧師科勒夫的好奇心。
That this didn't happen, owes everything to the curiosity of a local vicar, Reverend C.B. Clough, who wrote an account of the find that aroused the interest of the Society of Antiquaries, hundreds of miles away in London.
他為這次發現撰寫了一份報告，引起了幾百英里外倫敦文物研究協會的興趣。
Three years after the spoils from the burial had been divided, the British Museum bought from the tenant farmer the first and the largest of the fragments of gold, which had been his share of the booty.
在墓葬的財寶被瓜分三年之后，大英博物館才從那位佃農手里買到第一塊金片，這是他當年分到的戰利品，也是所有金片中最大的一塊。
Much that the vicar recorded had by that stage disappeared, including virtually the whole skeleton.
牧師記錄下來的物品大多消失了，其中包括整具骨骸。
This left only three large and twelve small crushed and flattened fragments of the decorated gold object.
剩下的只有三大塊、十二小塊被壓扁的黃金碎片。
It took another hundred years for the British Museum to gather together enough of the remaining fragments to begin a complete reconstruction of this divided treasure.
大英博物館又花了近百年的時間，才收集到了足夠的碎片，對這件四分五裂的財寶進行全面修復。有些碎片至今仍未出現。
What was the object that these fragments belonged to? When had it been made? Who had worn it?
這些碎片過去曾組成一個什么樣的物品？于何時制作？誰曾穿戴過它？
As more archaeological discoveries were made, it became clear that the Mold burial was indeed prehistoric, and dated to the newly identified age of bronze-around four thousand years ago.
在十九世紀，伴隨著更多考古發現，人們逐漸確定莫爾德墓葬應屬約四千年前的青銅時期。
