The title of this question was edited substantially changing the nature of the original query, making the existing answer nonsensical, and rendering the question a duplicate of other questions on the site.
Is "were scattered" a construction of passive voice or a simple past tense?
The Original question asked if the sentence was past simple or passive - it is in fact, of course, both of these. The pertinent and important point here is that if the sentence was past simple, the Original Poster needed to include it in their corpus of past simple sentences from the original source.
Unsurpisingly and unfortunately, as the title had been changed top make it a duplicate, it was then closed as such. The linked to questions do not address the Original Poster's concerns.
Would it be possible to revert the title to its original form and reopen the question - or alternatively link it to a duplicate of the original.
