Paying the Piper — Sharyn McCrumb

A motley crew of American and British professionals and amateurs gather for an archaeological dig into prehistoric burial rites on a small Scottish island. The quarters are cramped, cold, and Scottish-summer soggy. Tempers are already simmering when a crime-enthusiast American is found dead in his tent. Then one of the strongest in the crew dies mysteriously.

Afraid for her life, fellow digger and forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson, in love with myth and Celtic folklore, probes the rocky topsoil for a reason behind the aura of death that seems to hover over them. Is the excavation cursed by the ancient dead ... or is there a more modern and sinister explanation behind the strangely rising mortality rate?