I wonder why the tavern was abandoned with food in it in 2700 BC when the city itself was inhabitated far longer and according to Wikipedia might have been "the largest city in the world from c. 2075 to 2030 BC".
And regardless of how long bits of the food are preserved for future archaeologists, a couple of days after the tavern's closed most of it isn't really edible any more...
Buildings that fall into disrepair tend to be scavenged by humans for materials too. Much moreso anywhere there's wealth disparity or resource shortages.
This is a key plot point of the excellent novel Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow. Highly recommended.
Free ebook download from the author's site, here: https://craphound.com/pc/download/
My own hometown has experienced rapid growth over the same time span as Nashville, and has annexed large portions of what were commonly known as the suburbs. So there has been a literal change from what used to be suburbs to now be within city limits, in the course of a generation.
The incredibly low population density you can find on Wikipedia reflects the sprawling suburbia that composes the "city."
I think we often forget just how many of us there are on this planet (or even in a given country). Each of those million people all had their own homes, lives, businesses, and so on. And as the country sees population decline, much of that just gets left to rot. Homes that have been completely abandoned, usually because the owner died and left no heir, even have a term - akiya. Here's [1] an image search with all sorts of them. They make up more than 13% of all homes in Japan now. They have more homes than people to live in them!
And if things don't suddenly turn around in dramatic fashion, soon there will be tens of millions of these sort of places. In some you may even find the old owner. There's also a term for that - kodokushi [2].
[1] - https://search.brave.com/images?q=akiya%20houses&source=web
There's a site in the UK from slightly later (1000BC) that had food still found in containers but that was the result of a fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must_Farm_Bronze_Age_settlemen...
Kinda like the fishing towns around the Aral Sea.
Or the owner burned the place down after a tourist from a faraway land sold him a polly sea for some inn sewer ants.
Maybe someone was murdered there or everyone got food poisoning and it was closed up because people were superstitious.
edit: Bing Chat says...
>> "That’s an interesting question. I couldn’t find any direct evidence of ancient urban explorers, but there were many ancient explorers who traveled to different lands and cultures for various reasons123. Some of them may have explored urban areas as well, but they didn’t leave any records of their adventures."
>> "One possible exception is Xuan Zang (602-664), a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to India and visited many ancient cities and temples along the way. He wrote a detailed account of his journey, which is considered a valuable source of information on the history and culture of India and Central Asia1."
It’s not surprised it would be abandoned, but the story makes it sound like it was suddenly abandoned.
The simplest explanation to me is likely the untimely death of the proprietor, but even that doesn’t seem like a sufficient answer.