That dodecahedron featured in the first pic is swank af. Hats off to the ancients.
I've crafted a few in various media. Getting it right is tricky. Really makes you appreciate 3d printing.
I've crafted a few in various media. Getting it right is tricky. Really makes you appreciate 3d printing.
Or maybe they’re more like fizzbuzz for gallo-Roman bronze artificers. You show up at an interview and they ask you to knock out one of these to prove you’re not an idiot.
If this were the case, shouldn't there be makers' marks on them? Something to identify them as being the work of a journeyman level artisan hoping to use it to prove their worth? Otherwise, one could fraudulently present someone else's work as there own, and undermine the system.
I feel that if they were really part of a 'graduation portfolio' for crafters, it would be much more obvious. Something like an inscription that says "crafted by Albertus in the 14th year of the Emperor Foo".
I like your fizz-buzz theory. If the object is a one-and-done throw away, then you might not bother to put your mark on it.
Seems pretty specific to span two centuries of known construction. Why would they be saved and not recycled? Nearly every medieval village had a blacksmith, with larger population centers supporting more, within the whole of medieval Europe thousands of blacksmiths at any one time, so why have only 116 of these turned up when there should be hundreds of thousands of them?
I think it's very interesting their construction appears to cease just in time for Christianity to take over Europe in the late 4th century. Previously, Rome had 12 principal deities.
So, if we're talking about casting, then we have to ask what did they cast in, and what did they use for the molded object? I don't know when sand casting was invented, but I think that's how a lot of modern casting in bronze is done. As for the original piece that was molded, you could do a lost wax type process, and wax was certainly a thing available back then, but would it have been used for this purpose? And how would you do lost wax with sand casting? If it wasn't a lost wax process, then how did you get all those neat little knobs, because otherwise you'd get the equivalent of mold tear outs.
Any sand casted piece would have needed a lot of cleanup to make it look nice, so you'd need to cut, sand, and polish those edges and surfaces.
It would be interesting to have this discussion with someone who is well acquainted with the process of casting bronze, to see what their thoughts are.