The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.
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Though personally I like the "glove grandma" video of her crocheting gloves with the pieces.
Here's one of those vids; there are many more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0
The cheap and simple versions would have rotted away by now.
I’d argue if they did, someone was getting fired immediately.
I don't really buy that theory. Do we have any other examples of fancy decorative versions of working class tools?
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 prentice piece, based on the lack of wear. You hang a diploma on the wall, you put a prentice piece on a shelf for 30 years and barely touch it. (Although the gold examples would argue against this, I think).
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.
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...
> The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.
Which is why it's significant that none have been found in Rome, or any of the major warmer cities.
Why? Large premodern states were almost never strongly culturally homogeneous. Especially below the upper class/elite level.
Man of those countries speak Germanic languages now since they were invaded by Germanic speaking people after the Western Roman Empire collapsed, but there's still Roman ruins and old Roman cities to be found in all of those countries.
It depends.
We really have no data at all to back such a claim.
We barely even know anything about how metalworkers and other skilled craftsmen organized themselves back in those days in any part of the empire
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.