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Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#171

Post by bombcar »

bondarchuk wrote: post #118
RecycledEle wrote: post #9

Just because a measuring device is not standards referenced does not mean it can not be used to measure. If I need a peg to match the size of a drill bit, any collection of 12 holes is likely to have one the size of the drill bit that lets me tell my peg maker to "make the pegs this size." Handymen are just cussed enough* to not label any of them, and to expect the FNG (new guy) to remember which of the 12 unlabeled…

Furthermore this article only states: “They are not of a standard size, so will not be measuring devices." , which is incorrect since for use as a coincidence rangefinder (standardized to some standard) only the ratios between sizes of opposite holes would need to be standardized, not the size of the thing as a whole. The paper "Roman Dodecahedron as dioptron: analysis of freely available data" ( https://arxiv.org/ab…

Measuring devices do not need to be standard size if you're not comparing them or following a recipe of sorts.

You can use anything as a "ruler" to measure something and transfer that measurement to something else. It's what a jig or form does, after all.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#172

Post by ertian »

Beijinger wrote: post #141

Mysterious? I thought this is a solved problem. Especially also taking into account the boarders of the Roman Empire and the places where they were found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

Based on previous discussions, I don't think so. If they're really for knitting gloves you'd expect to find a lot of standard 'adult hand' sized dodecahedrons along with a few large & small (if that), but in fact you find a whole range of sizes (from tiny to gigantic), with far fewer mediums than you'd expect. They don't cluster around commercial towns: were people really knitting most gloves in border forts? They'd have been very expensive and difficult to produce; it wouldn't make sense for a master metalworker to spend weeks working on a trinket for knitting gloves when it could just as easily be made from wood for a fraction of the cost & effort. IIRC, they don't all have the knobs & holes, or they're oddly sized, and generally they're pretty nonstandard. You find them included in wealthy burials: were these rich people really knitting their own gloves--along with soldiers on the front lines? Why would they be buried with a knitting tool specifically for gloves?

Altogether, it seems pretty unlikely they were an aid to knitting gloves.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#173

Post by drewcoo »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #133
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. "Common Era" instead of "Anno Domini". More religiously neutral.

It’s start date is still a religious event, so I’m not sure it’s more neutral as much as it’s more obfuscating.

It was not exactly methodically chosen by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. Mostly to replace Diocletian's calendar.

Jesus was most likely born before 1 AD.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#174

Post by trackflak »

rickcecil wrote: post #32
zilti wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is CE the same as AD?

CE means “common era” which refers to the same time period that AD does, which stands for Anno Domini and means “the year of our lord,” which is rooted in the Christian faith. You will also see “BCE” and it means Before Common Era, which replaces BC, which means “Before Christ”. The newer terms are more inclusive.

"Inclusive" but meaningless.

The Georgian calendar (at least in the numbering of years) is a Christian construct, and it therefore makes sense to name year 0 after the year of Christ's birth. Whether or not one acknowledges his lordship or whatever, you are still operating in the Western tradition which is impossible to understand without Christianity.

It's just petty power tripping. Some people have that need to feel superior by swapping the dating system to something meaningless and arbitrary. What makes this era "Common"? Presumably the birth of Christ, since that's still when you are setting the origin of years. So the rename is utterly pointless. It's still A.D and should be referred to as such.

I'd have more respect if these revisionists went full Jacobin and plonked Year 1 down as some new date, and named the calendar after something new.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#175

Post by jzebedee »

SamBam wrote: post #170
imglorp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The knitting aid is persuasive. It fits with the geography, explains the different hole sizes, and it explains the knobs. Here's one of those vids; there are many more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

I don't really buy that theory. There's no explanation for why it needs to be this very-hard-to-cast bronze dodecahedron, instead of just a wooden board with pegs and holes, which is all that would be needed for the video above.

It's possible that most were made out of common materials. Only those made of something sufficiently resilient survived for us to find.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#176

Post by layer8 »

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.

That wouldn’t really explain why the holes have different sizes on different sides, and why some of the dodecahedrons were found in wealthy women’s graves.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#177

Post by KingOfCoders »

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.

As someone from the former capital of Raetia ;-) I might add "Since then, at least 116 similar objects have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom"

PS: Still humbled and amazed to find my small hometown of Cambodunum (70k people) on maps of major Roman roads like

https://latin4everyone.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/roman_roa...

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#179

Post by ertian »

Angostura wrote: post #6
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.

It's kind of a running joke amongst archeologists themselves.

See also paleontologists, and "it was probably for attracting a mate and/or regulating body temperature".

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#180

Post by hprotagonist »

nerdponx wrote: post #47
wirrbel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Historian Richard Rutt conservatively suggests that knitting originated in Egypt between 500 and 1200 A.D. Haven’t watched the video but the evidence for knitting in England under Roman rule certainly isn’t there. There were other methods to make knitting-like garments though so maybe this is explained in the video but I doubt that Romans knitted with this

I never considered that knitting might be so relatively new. Knitted wool clothing seems like an essential item for staying comfortable in cold wet weather. Did Europeans just rely on furs and skins before then?

there are other ways to make yarn into flexible clothes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A5lebinding is fairly old — mid-bronze age

Felting and weaving (or both) are also quite old.

Interestingly, the spinning wheel isn’t: woven textiles produced in europe before the 13th century would have been produced with yarn or thread made on drop spindles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_(textiles), and anything spinning-wheel-esque probably developed no earlier than c. 200-1000 globally.

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