There were five objects in total. A small ceramic vessel, intact, of a type the archaeologist identified as Etruscan ware—the distinctive matte black pottery made by a firing technique that had no equivalent in northern European production of any period. Beside it, a thin bronze mirror, corroded but whole, with a figural scene on the back that would later be identified as two women at a loom. Two small beads, turquoise-blue, of a kind associated with Egyptian trade goods. And a fragment of worked bone—a pin or needle with no inscription but a careful decorative incision at one end. No human or structural remains were found.
“A deposit,” the expert explained to Gerald that evening, washing her hands at his kitchen sink with the matter-of-fact ease of someone who had been invited into too many strangers’ houses to stand on ceremony. “Probably commemorative. The Etruscans, and other peoples in contact with them, sometimes created deposits of significant objects at meaningful places — thresholds, boundaries, and graves. We can’t rule out a funerary connection. Sometimes the objects were the memorial.”
Gerald thought about Thania. “Someone brought all of this here,” he said. “To this specific patch of ground.”
“It appears so.”
“Why here?”
She dried her hands and looked at him with the measured honesty he had come to respect in the people who had led this investigation. “We don’t know. We may never know. But yes—someone chose this place. Deliberately.”