A recently excavated room (top left) measuring about 90 square feet has been identified as a shrine for private religious rites. At some point, the room was used to store amphoras and building materials, including oyster shells (foreground), which would have been ground up and used to strengthen plaster and mortar. The shrine is covered in frescoes painted with Egyptian blue, an extremely expensive pigment imported from the eastern Mediterranean. Images of female figures connected to nature and agriculture cover the walls, including a woman (top) wearing a leaf crown and holding a plow and a tray laden with the season's first fruits; a woman (left) wearing a flower crown and carrying a basket of fruit and a curved stick; and (above) a personification of autumn, one of the four seasons depicted on the walls. archaeology.org 53