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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

#351

Post by ffgjgf1 »

shuntress wrote: post #213
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.

You are trying to make the facts fit the theory. Also, if we assume this were some kind of guild-related standard, it becomes even more odd that they are not mentioned in any accounts or records.

We have very few accounts or records surviving in general (and basically none at all from certain periods). There are a few books about agriculture, architecture, medicine etc. surviving but thats it. Basically all non political/military/religious/cultural texts had been lost

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#352

Post by ffgjgf1 »

TSiege wrote: post #112
yreg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think you and the poster are in agreement. The significance is that you wouldn't need knitted gloves in Mediterranean climates. So if this was for some other use or as a novelty, you'd expect it evenly distributed throughout the empire

> you'd expect it evenly distributed throughout the empire

Why? Large premodern states were almost never strongly culturally homogeneous. Especially below the upper class/elite level.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#353

Post by flir »

imglorp wrote: post #249
flir wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annoyingly, there's no wear. It's not a tool. Also: the size of the tube in French knitting isn't controlled by the size of the hole, it's controlled by the spacing of the pegs. You have to pass the wool over the pegs, so logically the pegs should be cylindrical not round. Earliest evidence for French knitting is 1535. There's no evidence for knitting of any kind until centuries after these things. I'm going with pre…

Why would there be wear in metal? Maybe from hands over years? The peg spacing is a very good point and maybe the disqualifier. I'm very dubious about the knitting claim. Woven textiles seem to go back 27,000 years. Knitting is just weaving, with fewer steps, using sticks.

I don't know if you've ever done French knitting or not, but you need to use a tool to lever the wool over the pegs. Something like a crochet hook. Traceology is the term sometimes used by archaeologists for examining this kind of wear, and they're pretty good at it - Aaron Deter-Wolf[1], for example, studies needles to determine if they were used for sewing or for tattooing.

Weaving, yes, and nålebinding is ancient (6500 BCE) but for some reason knitting doesn't seem to turn up until 10th century Egypt. Fabrics do get preserved sometimes, and knitting, like nålebinding, has the advantage of being portable. You'd think, if the technique was discovered significantly earlier, there'd be something to show it. A pair of knitting needles in a tomb somewhere, at least. After all the floors of iron age round houses seem to be littered with loom weights[2], and needles are also common finds. So where are the knitting needles?

For me, it's the gold examples that put the fly in the ointment of every theory (including my favourite). One imagines a Neopythagorean cult or something, but then you'd expect the geographic distribution to be different.

[1] https://tdoa.academia.edu/AaronDeterWolf [2] https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A26...

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#354

Post by ffgjgf1 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #109
INTPenis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think ancient roman society worked that way. Traveling is expensive first of all, carrying stuff if even more expensive. You carry what you need, not metal trinkets. And also your reputation is based mostly on word of mouth. That's how it still works in rural societies today. If there were any such certification for metalurgists it would have been a small one like a ring or a bracelet.

Ancient Roman society was not Medieval Europe, there was very little serfdom, especially among those with any skill whatsoever, so plenty of people moved from place to place, likely dozens or hundreds of times in their lives. There were plenty of captured slaves from conquered peoples, but skilled metalworkers would hardly belong to that group.

> there was very little serfdom

Serfdom (or a comparable system) and other strong legal limitations on social mobility were certainly a thing in the 300s.

> so plenty of people moved from place to place, likely dozens or hundreds of times in their lives.

I’m not sure how is it particularly different from medieval Europe in that way?

But there are other reasons why traveling and moving to different regions was relatively rare for most people (e.g. almost everyone was extremely reliant on their local social networks, so moving to a different community was very costly). Of course metalworkers and other highly skilled craftsmen were probably always one of the most mobile groups (in pre-Roman times and during the middle ages as well)

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#355

Post by ffgjgf1 »

InitialLastName wrote: post #263
throwup238 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely would have moved around since one of the most common ways to get the apprenticeships was to sign up to help with an army that was mobilizing for war. Militaries needed a lot of blacksmiths to tag along as support and they needed a lot of apprentices for manual labor. When they came back from, they often had a little more choice in where to go back to so they had quite a bit more mobility over all.

Not just that, but "head out with the military, stay where you end up (or somewhere along the route)" is a tried-and-true method of moving people throughout history. How else would you end up with Latin dialects spoken over a range from Portugal to the Black Sea?

> How else would you end up with Latin dialects spoken over a range from Portugal to the Black Sea?

Same way we ended with almost everyone in Ireland speaking English as their main language?

violent conquest, followed by a brutal subjugation and a cultural genocide.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#356

Post by ffgjgf1 »

shuntress wrote: post #215
garciansmith wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people would never have willingly traveled far from their birthplace, in medieval Europe or the Roman Empire. This is especially true for those who had few skills. You could do basic labor in your own village, but how could you leave without any money or support network (e.g., a family)? Why would people trust you elsewhere? The dynamic was probably different in larger cities, of which there were…

People definitely travelled. For business, religion, and pleasure. There wouldn't be such extensive roads if they didn't.

The roads were mainly for the army though. And water travel was almost always preferable when traveling long distances (the cost of shipping for goods was a magnitude or more lower).

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#357

Post by ffgjgf1 »

INTPenis wrote: post #298
shuntress wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People definitely travelled. For business, religion, and pleasure. There wouldn't be such extensive roads if they didn't.

Sure, but for the vast majority of workers and artisans they would most likely do a pilgrimage. And we have found tons of little charms, even penises, but they are all much smaller than any of the dodecahedrons. Travel with luggage is what I was referring to as rare for most people.

Isn’t long distance “pilgrimage” more of a Christian thing and it didn’t really become that widespread until the 300s or 400s?

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#358

Post by ffgjgf1 »

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 they can sell as scrap

We’re talking about tiny pieces of copper, though. Would it really have been that expensive to be worth the trouble (unless you had a bag of them)

> but I think it was either very important to some ritual, or very practical to some trade.

Why? We know that premodern people often spent significant amounts of money/resources on things that were neither practical nor had any religious importance

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#359

Post by INTPenis »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #357
INTPenis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but for the vast majority of workers and artisans they would most likely do a pilgrimage. And we have found tons of little charms, even penises, but they are all much smaller than any of the dodecahedrons. Travel with luggage is what I was referring to as rare for most people.

Isn’t long distance “pilgrimage” more of a Christian thing and it didn’t really become that widespread until the 300s or 400s?

They sure are.

During roman period most likely people traveled for festivals.

Archaeologists have found what could be temporarily built up areas for festivals. And it is known that festivals were a big thing that gave the population a break from work.

Which is what I personally would like to connect with the famous penis pendants, but nobody knows for sure. They could just be fertility symbols related to courtship and marriage.

FYI I'm doing a lot of guessing here, which is apt when it comes to discussing dodecahedrons. In my opinion you can look at contemporary, or near contemporary, rural communities and see a lot of similarities with ancient society.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#360

Post by anthk »

nemo wrote: post #299
mkl wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the regions the dodecahedrons have been found were mostly not thoroughly Romanised, right? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron : "at least 116 similar objects have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom".

No, that's not right at all. Those areas were all part of the Roman empire and thoroughly Romanized as well. They used generally identical Roman technologies in Britain as North Africa or Italy, spoke the same Latin, used the same building styles, clothing styles varied primarily by how many layers they wore, they had the same legal system, and shared Roman arts and culture. Man of those countries speak Germanic lang…

>spoke the same Latin,

It depends.

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