That Roman dodecahedron mystery finally clicked for me after a lecture

I went to a talk at the local museum last Saturday, and the speaker was going over those weird Roman dodecahedrons nobody can agree on. She mentioned one was found in Belgium with wear marks that matched rope patterns, and suddenly it made sense as a knitting or weaving tool. I never thought about them as practical craft items instead of religious objects. Has anyone else changed their mind on what these things were used for?

3 comments

3 Comments

emmamason21d ago

Happens all the time with old stuff really, people assume everything was religious or ceremonial when half the time it was just someone's everyday tool that happened to survive.

colescott21d ago

Knitting or weaving tool" is a stretch, they never found yarn with them so it's just another guess.

shanec6121d ago

lol "knitting or weaving tool" yeah that's the academic version of "it's a thing that does a thing". Honestly that's my whole life right there. My wife will ask me what I'm doing and I'll say "staring at my phone" and she's like "okay but what are you doing?" and I'm like "uh... phone stuff?" so I can't judge the archaeologists too hard lol. At least they admitted they don't know instead of calling it a religious idol for the third time this week.