Bronze Age

The Bronze Age enters the investigation through the remains at Knocknaree: above all, a massive ceremonial stone associated with religious activity on the hill. It is at once an archaeological object, the place where Katy Devlin’s body is found, and a focus for competing interpretations. The stone’s possible sacrificial use lends the murder an unsettling historical resonance, but the evidence does not establish a connection between ancient ritual and the killing. The period matters because it makes Knocknaree more than a crime scene: it is a contested landscape whose layers of human use are threatened by modern development.

Archaeological Layer and Material Evidence

During his initial tour, Mark Hanly sets the Bronze Age ceremonial stone within a long sequence of occupation at the site: a Neolithic settlement, an Iron Age roundhouse, Viking dwellings, a fourteenth-century keep, a sixteenth-century castle, and an eighteenth-century cottage. This succession makes the Bronze Age one layer among many, rather than the single explanation for Knocknaree. Yet the stone is prominent enough to orient the crime-scene work: Cassie Maddox and the technical team are stationed beside it.

The stone is a flat block, roughly seven feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high, chipped from a single boulder. The surrounding field has been crudely bulldozed, while a cushion of ground immediately around the stone remains untouched, leaving it raised above the churned earth like an island. Katy Devlin’s body lies on top of it. The physical arrangement is stark, but it does not by itself show why the killer chose the stone or whether its ancient function influenced the crime.

The site’s other Bronze Age finds give the stone a broader context. Mark describes votive figurines, a gold offering cup, and remains of animal sacrifices, alongside possible evidence of human sacrifice. He explains that Knocknaree means Hill of the king, while cautioning that the origin of the name is uncertain; the archaeological evidence, he says, points toward a pre-Christian religious reference rather than a political one. There is no evidence of royal burials or dwelling places on the site. The combination of religious objects and the absence of royal remains supports his account of the hill as a major religious place, without resolving every question about the practices conducted there.

Sacrifice and the Murder Investigation

The possibility of sacrifice quickly becomes a public story. A tabloid reporter asks whether the body was found on an altar used by Druids for human sacrifice, and the press also raises the prospect of a satanic cult. Rob Ryan says there is no evidence for a homicidal satanic cult and gives no comment on the reporter’s claim about the altar. His private recognition of a deep groove around the stone complicates the scene: it reminds him of the grooves on morgue autopsy tables, designed to drain blood. The association links the ancient-looking setting to the recent handling of dead bodies, but remains an impression, not proof of ritual use in the murder.

Archaeologist Hunt confirms that the stone is a Bronze Age sacrificial altar, while stressing uncertainty over whether the sacrifices were human or animal. Its shape and dimensions, he says, could fit human sacrifice; he regards it as a very rare artifact and sees it as evidence that the hill held immense religious importance. Asked whether there is anything else to support the claim, he replies that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. His caution leaves a gap between the altar’s probable ceremonial function and the stronger claims circulating around it. The novel preserves that gap rather than turning archaeological possibility into a solved explanation for Katy’s death.

Heritage, Threat, and Belief

The ancient site is not secure or untouched. Mark says that the finds shed and office are locked, valuable finds are sent to head office, and the tools shed has only recently been locked after tools went missing and local farmers used the archaeologists’ hoses. He expects that in a month the site will be gone, apart from the tower. The Bronze Age remains therefore sit within an excavation already altered by practical pressures and threatened by the motorway. Their preservation is not an abstract concern: Mark sees the loss of the site as imminent.

That threat also shapes Rob Ryan’s suspicions about Mark. Discussing the possibility of a human sacrifice, Rob speculates that Mark might have believed a killing would persuade the gods to save the site from the motorway. He portrays Mark as rational about most things but, in his view, irrational when speaking about Knocknaree’s worship and sacrilege. This is a conjecture voiced during the investigation, not an established motive or a finding that Mark committed a crime. The contrast reveals how the language of ancient religion can distort modern judgment as readily as it can illuminate the site.

Cassie Maddox offers a different measure of Mark’s attachment. She argues that archaeology and heritage are his faith: not an abstract code or a pursuit justified by personal reward, but something concrete that belongs to his daily life. Rob counters that Mark poured a libation to a Bronze Age god and says he finds that odd; Sam responds that Mark is simply young and jokes that a wife and children would settle him. Their exchange does not establish what the libation meant to Mark, but it sets his practice against the others’ assumptions about what counts as reasonable belief. The Bronze Age consequently survives in the present not only as stone and artifacts, but as a source of devotion, suspicion, humor, and disagreement over what deserves protection.