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Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

The article fails to mention a major hypothesis that immediately came to mind when I saw the object. Wikipedia agrees [1]:

> It has also been suggested that they might have been an object to test the skill of a metalsmith, perhaps as part of a portfolio to demonstrate their capabilities to customers or as a way to qualify for a certain status in a collegium (guild). This speculation is based on the historic cost of bronze and the level of skill necessary to cast such an object.

It’s complexity screams “apprentice’s graduating casting project” which would also explain why some were found with coin hoards - they’re sentimental objects kept by successful blacksmiths; the one thing they’d keep to represent an entire career.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron

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I think the major argument against this theory is the map, as the article states. Most of the theories for their use are actually invalid simply by looking at the map of finds.

Fishing, toys, music, games, things that were global in the roman empire.

What the map shows is that it was used in the colder parts of the empire.

That map looks exactly what I would expect it to look like if it was passed on from master to apprentice metalworker as part of a graduating project.

These wouldn't have been products sold to customers and traded, they would have been symbols that the individuals had achieved mastery within a specific lineage of artisans restricted to that region. Almost all knowledge was communicated via oral means because scribes were very expensive and most people were illiterate - there's zero reason to expect a wide distribution throughout the empire.

I think metalworking also has the longest history of sophisticated development in current day Northern Europe. The dispersion on the map I think re-enforces both that history and the notion of a portfolio piece.

Ok but that means there would be more such objects, for every level before mastery right?

And also such objects would be much more rare. Imagine all the objects that have been found and melted down during the last 2000 years. For us to have found over 100 of these so far is already an indication that it was a lot more common than an apprentice piece.

> Ok but that means there would be more such objects, for every level before mastery right?

What levels of mastery? Roman historians didn't write much about the ins and outs of their metalworking industry so we don't know how intricate the process was but apprentices graduating is rather universal (their teachers get tired of them or die eventually, after all). Besides, just because it's an "apprentice piece" doesn't mean that it's made by an amateur, but by a skilled artisan to prove they're ready to go out on their own.

> And also such objects would be much more rare. Imagine all the objects that have been found and melted down during the last 2000 years. For us to have found over 100 of these so far is already an indication that it was a lot more common than an apprentice piece.

Finding only a hundred of these makes them extremely rare. Check out Wikipedia's non-exhaustive list of museum collections of ancient Roman and Greek artifacts [1]. The collections number in the tens of thousands of objects each and that's just the stuff a few collections felt was worth keeping - there is tons more Roman artifacts on the antiquities market and huge troves are still discovered on a regular basis [2][3].

From [3]:

> This guy even got his grubby hands on a Roman dodecahedron, an extremely rare artifact (only 100 are known to exist) whose purpose remains an archaeological mystery to this day. A total of 13,246 artifacts were seized in the raid on his home and from several safety deposit boxes he rented in Lorraine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_of_Greek_and_R...

[2] https://www.ksl.com/article/24751877/10k-roman-artifacts-fou...

[3] https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/60269

But you can't really compare any artifact with a metal object, metal was valuable and often melted down. The ones we know about were the ones not found by battlefield scavengers and other opportunists. Even gravediggers would take metal objects and melt them down.

The bulk of artifacts that survive to this day are pottery, jewelry, and metal Roman coins. Two of those three categories were mostly metal objects that could have been melted down but weren't. Collections of Ancient Roman artifacts are full of metal objects that are orders of magnitude more common than these dodecahedrons.

We have many more examples of Roman weapons made up of much more valuable metals that survived.

“Ok but that means there would be more such objects, for every level before mastery right?”

If bronze is expensive, then poor quality versions could simply be melted down to raw material.

I like this idea. And I struggle to imagine the scenario, because it seems like it would also have social aspects which we can’t know without written testimony.

If the metal is expensive, how is to valued compared to other goods? In the modern world we have tons of stuff, but to what degree is this the same in the ancient Roman world? Who pays it’s cost? If you’re an apprentice could you afford to keep it—especially if you’re not very good (haha).

> Fishing, toys, music, games, things that were global in the roman empire.

I'm fairly certain that every-day practices for all of these things were far from universal across the empire; it's a huge assumption to think that, especially considering that we don't actually know all that much about some of these thing and that we don't know what we don't know (e.g. it was only a few months ago that they found evidence of gladiator fights in Britain; it's entirely possible – even likely – that there were wide-spread well-known games in some regions that we just don't know about).

I'm not saying it can't be related to heat, but I wouldn't be so quick to jump to that conclusion based solely on the location where these things were found.

There may be more arguments besides the map.

Each object has 12 sides, so 12 holes. For hundreds of exemplars thats thousands of holes. The holes are described as having different sizes on the same dodecahedron. For being an object of mystery, one would assume a catalog of features to have been constructed, but I am not aware of any.

I believe they were used to test coin sizes (could be used by both scrapers and verifiers), see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35946841

Such a hypothesis should be testable: catalog the hundreds of dodecahedra, one row per item, and 12 columns for the radii.

Collect all occurring thousands of radii and sort, and observe density peaks and compare age of item and coins of era with radii.

I think it's an interesting hypothesis; it's definitely a complex piece. However there are some things like the different size holes and the little knobs that I don't see adding complexity to the dodecahedron and seem to be more functional to me. It seems like it could be rotated to put the right size hole whereve it needs to be and the knobs are placed so it can stand no matter what hole is chosen

That's actually what gave me the idea in the first place: I think the knobs resemble practice sprues [1] or jig holding points.

The holes would likely have been cut using premade templates so the builders just used a different side pattern on each side, perhaps to demonstrate centering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprue_(manufacturing)#Injectio...

Then why are there ones made of stone?

to test the skill of a stonesmith

LOL

Not unreasonable; an exact dodecahedral shape is equally challenging to construct geometrically in any material, and probably more difficult to build in stone or wood than in wax or clay. Artisans and amateurs of different specialties might have emulated each other.

If you have metal working tools, wood or stone isn’t a bad medium to design small objects. I would expect many more wooden etc examples to have been created that didn’t last.

Also they look cool. Also they're a platonic solid. The golden ratio is built into pentagons, they're tricky to construct with a compass, basically they're cool

Why the specific Gallo-Roman geographic distribution? Presumably blacksmiths existed and needed "visiting cards" across the Roman Empire?

As an impromptu digital armchair archeologist I'd say this very specific geographic dispersion suggests cultural / religious significance. In any case it weighs against a purely utilitarian role (that would easily diffuse across the empire).

Wax residue was found inside "one or two". Possibly used in a ceremony using candles. The protrusions might have been yarn anchors, not to knit gloves, but to form elaborate ritualistic symbols. I.e. imagine the bare metal covered with a colorful pattern that would be wound and unwound to match the occasion.

Considering the size and makeup of the Roman empire, I wouldn't be surprised if there were substantial differences in every-day purely utilitarian activities for no other reason than "that's how we do it here". People didn't even speak the same language (Britain never adopted Latin as a common language, and Gaul didn't until after these devices are dated).

Unfortunately a lot of these details about every-day life are lost to history as no one bothered to write it down "as everyone already knows about it".

Archeologists classifying every object they can’t explain the purpose of as a cult/religious/ritualistic item is a bit of cliche. I wonder what future archeologists might think about some of the stuff we have in a couple of thousand years if some societal collapse occurs in between.

> Possibly used in a ceremony using candles

It’s possible they could have also used it to hold candles outside of religious ceremonies.

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