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Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

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Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#91

Post by nemo »

INTPenis wrote: post #85
ransom1538 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I respect the "they would have been recycled" argument, but, there would still be some . If you were good enough to cast a Dodecahedron, you are probably rich enough to keep your best one, to show off to all the new hipster kids.

Any metal we find after 2000 years is a miracle. So the amount of these dodecahedrons indicate that there were a lot more in circulation at the time. 2000 years of poor and homeless people looking for any metal they can sell as scrap. That's why I don't buy the apprentice argument that always pops up in these discussions. In this case you'd be excused for saying it's some sort of ritualistic object. Because rituals a…

>Any metal we find after 2000 years is a miracle.

That's not really true. There's regular finds of hoards of thousands of ancient coins that are in excellent condition, esp. Roman coins. You'll find there's an actually quite a large number of ancient metal artifacts archaeologists have discovered if you look into it. Certainly the preservation rate is very low since people tend to guard metal objects and recycle them, but things happen, today archaeologists estimate there's something in the order of 10-30 millions of Roman coins that have been recovered in museum collections and held by private owners.

This depends on the metal, of course, iron preserves poorly as does bronze, so those are rare, but gold preserves extremely well, and silver better than bronze, esp. in drier conditions.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#92

Post by huytersd »

NL807 wrote: post #57
Loughla wrote: post #4

My favorite thing about archaeology is that if they have no idea whatever about the things they find. . . >were used for ritualistic or religious purposes Don't know what it is? Religion baby.

Or when they find dicks, drawn, sculpted, or otherwise: >it must be a fertility symbol The ancients didn't do dick jokes/humour apparently.

Well the Indians still worship Shiva’s penis. Look up Shiva lingams. I like to think about what it would be like if Christians prayed to Jesus’ dick sometimes.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#93

Post by leblancfg »

pwillia7 wrote: post #39

Why wouldn't it just be a 12 sided die for gambling?

Casting this would be really hard; if that were the case you'd also have expected to have way more versions of it in wooden (or other similar easy to fabricate) form.

Plus, grapefruit-sized feels like way too big for this purpose.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#94

Post by lithos »

nemo wrote: post #87
mrob wrote: post #10

I like the theory that it's an examination piece to qualify as a master metalworker. Casting a flawless dodecahedron could have been a way to demonstrate your skill. The shape is somewhat arbitrary: anything that's both difficult to cast and easy to examine for quality would work, but once people started making dodecahedrons that's what people expected and it became a kind of standard.

One thing to keep in mind is the geographic distribution of these things. They're mostly found in the province of Gallia and Britain, and not in other regions. There'd be a lot of metalworkers in Rome and the surrounding cities in central and south Italy, but no artifacts like this have been found, and they've found > 100 of them now so the distribution is probably significant.

The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this.

The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.

___

Though personally I like the "glove grandma" video of her crocheting gloves with the pieces.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#95

Post by quacker »

tristramb wrote: post #73
taneq wrote: post #5

One theory (albeit contested) is that they were used as a jig to knit gloves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

The use of these for knitting the fingers of gloves is obviously correct. It explains so many things about them: Their distribution (northern Europe - where you might need gloves). The knobs (to loop the wool round). The differing sizes of the holes (to fit fingers of different sizes). To say that the functions of these is unknown is just lazy journalism. I am sure if one of these had been handed to my late grandmoth…

It’s a good theory, but not obvious at all.

- It is not known that that the Romans used knitted clothing. Knitting was invented later.

- Knitting can be done with cheaper, easier to craft tools that are just as effective. Knitting doesn’t explain the cost and skill required to craft the dodecahedrons.

- There is no wear on these dodecahedrons that we’d normally expect from a well-used tool.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#96

Post by mcphage »

lithos wrote: post #94
nemo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is the geographic distribution of these things. They're mostly found in the province of Gallia and Britain, and not in other regions. There'd be a lot of metalworkers in Rome and the surrounding cities in central and south Italy, but no artifacts like this have been found, and they've found > 100 of them now so the distribution is probably significant.

The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this. The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work. ___ Though personally I like the "glove grandma" video of her crocheting gloves with the pieces.

> The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this.

> The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.

Which is why it's significant that none have been found in Rome, or any of the major warmer cities.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#97

Post by yreg »

mcphage wrote: post #96
lithos wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this. The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work. ___ Though personally I like the "glove grandma" video of her crocheting gloves with the pieces.

> The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this. > The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work. Which is why it's significant that none have been found in Rome, or any of the major warmer cities.

Why? This could have been just some local system in that region.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#98

Post by yreg »

stabbles wrote: post #56
Loughla wrote: post #4

My favorite thing about archaeology is that if they have no idea whatever about the things they find. . . >were used for ritualistic or religious purposes Don't know what it is? Religion baby.

Similarly the overuse evolutionary biology. Obviously this ... seemingly useless feature must have been ... crucial to survival of this species. I guess Thomas Kuhn calls this ordinary science. Explanation within the framework. But it's incredibly dull

But in biology, any single feature is just a random mutation + not enough evolutionary pressure to weed it out. ('Crucial to survival' is a stretch.)

How can the evolutionary explanation be overused? It literally applies in case of and explains any single feature, no?

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#99

Post by ramesh31 »

leblancfg wrote: post #93
pwillia7 wrote: post #39

Why wouldn't it just be a 12 sided die for gambling?

Casting this would be really hard; if that were the case you'd also have expected to have way more versions of it in wooden (or other similar easy to fabricate) form. Plus, grapefruit-sized feels like way too big for this purpose.

Sure, but rich people love to gamble. Rich Romans even more so. And we all know how much rich people love blowing their money on meaningless status symbols. This is honestly the highest probability IMO.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#100

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Fluorescence wrote: post #58
mildchalupa wrote: post #16

I thought it was determined to be a glove finger knitting apparatus.

Hmm, I'm not convinced. The only geometry the knitting demonstrations justify is "pins around hole". I don't see an argument for the dodecahedron shape or the cast metal. A vastly cheaper wooden jig with nails would service just as well and offer much better ergonomic possibilities, like a handle. The knitting with the finger growing inside the dodec looks unhelpful and implausible.

Romans had mass production facilities for some things. Possibly gloves. So a durable permanent jig is not an unreasonable suggestion.
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