System Architecture Archaeology in Practice — A Non-Famous Artifact: Case Study IV

This preprint applies the System Architecture Archaeology (SAA) framework to a Roman lead tessera (BM B.9140) held by the British Museum, using a structured MIMETA dataset derived from official catalog records. The study classifies the object as orphaned institutional hardware—a physical authorization device whose operational meaning was lost when Roman administrative systems collapsed. Three falsifiable hypotheses are generated for its original function: an amphitheater entry token, a commodity distribution voucher, and a guild authorization key. Rather than proposing a single solution, the paper demonstrates how SAA and AI can transform ordinary museum objects into testable reconstructions of ancient institutional systems.