Or for estimate of measure by volume rather than weight. There has to be some standardization of price in a market.
We need to know how uniform the holes are; it’s unlikely all the recovered pieces would be for different types of coins just be coincidence.
Please do. I’m not a metalurgist, so I just don’t know that much about bronze. I do know that ‘stone’ is not a very clear description. If they are marble, the knobs might be fragile, but not if they are granite or soapstone.
The material probably isn’t the issue - Bronze can be forged, in which case it’s pretty strong, but these pieces look cast - probably lost wax method, which will be brittle. I’m not a metallurgist either, but I do know from experience that cast metal objects are prone to breakage when dropped or thrown, especially on thin or protruding parts.
I’m not sure I’ve even seen a picture of one of the stone examples, but if they’re just a stone-carved version of the metal ones, the knobs would be very vulnerable to breaking off even if the material is granite -
They do, but the knobs also look a great deal like ball feet you’d find on a cauldron or other item of small metalware.
Which could explain the presence of wax in one of them - first out of the cast.
Some more thoughts:
If they were candle holders, there’d be more than one with wax in.
The dodecahedron is prone to roll a bit, but the surfaces are flat. I’d speculate that if they were for steadying it, the little knobs were either put there after some former design proved to be too “rolly”.
But since no earlier versions are extant despite their widespread distribution, I’d argue that the knobs were integral to the design from the very beginning.
Perhaps, rather than to stop them rolling, the knobs are to raise the flat face of the object from the surface on which it’s resting?
Finally, I think the holes may be a red herring. An image search on “roman dodecahedron” reveals this icosahedron which has a very similar design, but the holes are tiny and clearly only ornamental. (No idea as to the validity or provenance of the image, however.)
The problem with the coin sizer theory is that Roman coins of the dodecahedron period were not uniformly round, being hand stamped with crude dies. Some can only loosely be called even round. It is pointless to create a tool to measure coins that are so rarely uniform.
Having cast metal via the lost wax technique, I can assure you no wax could survive the molten bronze being poured into the cast.
The precision and the fact that the seem to be found individually spread throught northern Europe suggests they are a tool. Casting can be time consuming to finish as they are. To me they would have to be something special that requires precision.
Wax could have been spilled into a completed dodecahedron, when they were working on other castings.
Regardless, them being candle holders isn’t the only way wax could be in one, and I agree with jjimmthat if they were candle holders, more than one would have wax in it.
