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.
Why none in Roman North Africa or all the other provinces in the east which were also "the middle of nowhere" with the same needs of metal work as Gallia/Britain.
Cultures and traditions are different in different places, even with gigabit internet and ubiquitous literacy.
>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 the very fact that people buried them proves how sought after they were. And of course if something is buried, and everyone involved dies before retrieving it, then it survives. But a lot of circumstances have to line up for that to happen.
They were very sought after, but it was very common for folks to put their money in a sealed ceramic pot to protect and hide it, either buried under the floor of their home somewhere or outside in some secret spot. There were regular wars, plagues, invasions, and other civic chaos that left many of these hidden troves long buried until someone later found them. Ancient peoples buried a lot of metal artifacts for burials or rituals (the Celts buried a lot of weapons in their rites) that have been recovered as well. Lots of circumstances need to line up, but the ancient past had many very chaotic eras. With metal detectors large numbers of troves are being rediscovered.
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.
It seems like the location these are generally found in could offer clues. If they were blacksmith related I would expect them to be found closer to the buildings where they would be used or stored. If they’re for a military related purpose (approximating distances) then I would expect to find them more alongside roads, and strategically relevant places. Thoughts?
Did people not just buy things for decoration in the Roman empire? Seems like we try to attach deep meaning to everything discovered in older civilizations. When many could just have some mundane meaningless purpose like decoration. Imagine the poor future people that seek to find meaning in the unearthed funko pops and gold spray painted pine cones of our time. Reminds me of the guy that buried flaming hot cheetos i…
Yeah, someone probably made it out of passion once, others liked it so much they offered him lot of money or fame, the art proliferated. Some artists created similar models, some modified on top of it.
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.
The equivalent today would be 3Dbenchy boats -- "we found an identical boat toy design in multiple sites made of different plastic materials, colors and sizes. It is spread universally around the World cities, found in sites of crafts, leading us to believe it is an idol of a new 21st century religion predominant among workers of the arts and crafts"
Having given my brother a Tungsten cube once for Christmas, it's possible they just made these because they were fun and looked cool.
Metals were very resource and labour intensive to make in those days, I don't think there was much making these for laughs and giggles. That also would would not explain why they are only found in the colder parts of the roman empire.
Why none in Roman North Africa or all the other provinces in the east which were also "the middle of nowhere" with the same needs of metal work as Gallia/Britain.
Cultures and traditions are different in different places, even with gigabit internet and ubiquitous literacy.
Roman North Africa was thoroughly Romanized by the era these start showing up, and the eastern provinces were as well. The might be some cultural reason these show up where they do, seems likely, it's very, very dubious that this cultural reason had to do with metalworkers identifying themselves since the sort of Roman metal working technology and culture around it was actually very standardized across the empire at this time.
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.
I like that theory too and offer a followon explanation: to make a dodecahedron you must make an accurate regular pentagon and this is not trivial with ancient geometric methods, you need to have learned a thing or two to get there. This makes it a better test than, say, an icosahedron. But we do know that the Roman empire wasn't completely unfamiliar with icosahedral dice, probably for a magical or divinatory purpos…
Come now... Saving rolls use icosahedrons. Old-school paladins used D12 for hit points, I don't know about 5E.