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These were the Cartiers or the Tiffanys of Bronze Age Europe.
他们是青铜时代欧洲的卡地亚与蒂凡尼。
But what kind of society could have produced this cape?
什么样的社会才能制造出这样的物品？
The sheer opulence and intricate details of the object, suggest that it must have come from a centre of great wealth and power, perhaps comparable to the contemporary courts of the pharaohs of Egypt or the palaces of Minoan Crete-for the cape must have been made around 1700 BC.
它的华丽与精细都表明，它一定来自一个曾经的政治与财富中心，说不定能与法老时代的埃及或是米诺斯的克里特相提并论。如此精美的设计需要高超的构图与规划能力，这表明这个社会已有悠久的奢侈品制作历史。
But archaeology has revealed no obvious palaces, cities or kingdoms anywhere in Britain at this time.
但是考古学家至今尚未在英国发现这一时期的任何明显的宫殿、域市或是王国。
There are the vast ceremonial monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, hundreds of stone circles and thousands of burial mounds which would have dominated the landscape, but little survives of any dwelling places,
我们这片土地上有埃夫伯里石圈与巨石阵等大型纪念物，也有几百处石头摆成的圆环，几千座墓葬堆，但是很少发现人类居所的遗迹。
and what does remain, suggests that these were extremely modest-thatched wooden roundhouses that would normally suggest tribal farming societies, led by chiefs.
从少数遗留下来的房屋来看，他们居住得相当简陋，茅草顶的木制房屋表明他们生活在由族长领导的农业部落社群里。
In the past, it was easy to dismiss prehistoric societies as primitive people existing before recognisable civilisations emerged.
过去人们常认为，在可辨别的文明出现之前，英国的史前社会只是原始人聚居的社群。
With few settlements and only burials to work from, it is easy to see why these assumptions were made.
我们找到的人类居所极少，只有少数墓葬可供研究，因此做出这种假设无可厚非。
But it's partly through the discovery of rare objects like the Mold Gold Cape that in recent years we have come to see them very differently.
但随着莫尔德黄金披肩这样稀有物品的出现，我们对这些社群的看法已大有改观。
For while it's unique in its complexity, the cape is just one example of a number of precious objects which tell us that societies in Britain must then have been extremely sophisticated, both in their crafts and in their social structures.
我们已有好几样类似的贵重物品，虽然没有披肩这么精美，亦可以证明当时在英国生活的社群结构复杂，制作工艺发达。
And that their societies were not isolated, but part of a larger European trade network.
而且就如前文的玉斧一般，它们也足以表明，这些社群并不是孤立的，而是欧洲大型贸易网络的一部分。
