Having one of these in your possession would be enough to get you in the door, as well as giving your potential employer a quick and easy way to judge the quality of your work. The alternative would be to require a prospective employee to make a dodecahedron in front of you, which doesn’t really provide all that much of a benefit in the long term.
Has anyone ever tried matching the sizes/circumferences of the coins with the holes?
Could have been used as a auto-coin sorting device?
This is pretty much how it worked pre-internet
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.
There were plenty of captured slaves from conquered peoples, but skilled metalworkers would hardly belong to that group.
This had little to do with serfdom, and practices that would fit under what we might call serfdom were extremely varied from time and place. It would have been very rare for someone to have the means, ability, and desire to move far from their home yet couldn't because they were somehow legally bound to land owned by a lord (who only had power over that one area anyhow).
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.
There wouldn't be such extensive roads if they didn't.
Travel with luggage is what I was referring to as rare for most people.
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.
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)