Mystery Room (A10)
VC25

When a complex structure is excavated, there is always an effort to differentiate amongst the various rooms. Sometimes finds from inside the walls of a given enclosed space help determine the function. For instance, the main storage space/exchange depot of Royal Storehouse AK was determined by an extraordinary number of discarded sealings (over 1,000) found scattered in three separate layers atop the building floor.

One of the rooms in Area A10 in Royal Storehouse AK is the subject of this short film. Its function remains a mystery. The finds within it are quite ambiguous and do not lend themselves to easy decipherment.

This is the last of the spaces that Giorgio Buccellati encounters in a walk-through of the Royal Storehouse. It contains spars of burned wood, the function of which is unknown. Their layout is provisional; the pieces are pedestaled (left on a column of undisturbed soil). Interestingly, these pedestaled fragments seem to trace the layout of possible "work-stations" in the larger space. In the northern half of the room, their layout could conceivably be seen as the remains of a fallen standing loom, comparanda for which can be seen in the Agora at Athens—a speculation by unit supervisor Rick Hauser, acknowledging that his example hearkens from a later time. James Walker of the excavation staff has ventured that the area might in fact have been used for weaving and clothing manufacture.

But, truly, we simply do not know for sure.

How these burned members came to be there and how they were originally configured will have to wait for explanation in another excavation season, and perhaps will never with certainty be known.

There is more to see in this sequence, and to discover. Speculation invited!