The Wiki entry notes that several of the 100+ found were associated with coin hoards, indicating that the owners must have thought they valuable or they were expensive. This tends to discount the notion that they didn’t have a function or were merely decorative, or were of a completely mundane utilitarian purpose.
Perhaps folks were willing to pay big bucks for warm gloves.
A bronze object in the classical era would be at least as valuable as the same weight of bronze coins. So it’s not too suprising people would sometimes store them together, especially if the owner had no other use for the object.
I do wonder if there hadn’t been dodecahedra made of wood. My understanding is that few, if any, wooden objects from the Roman Empire have survived, so it wouldn’t be surprising if these hadn’t. Metal was a rather expensive material in those days, so if these had a utilitarian purpose, you’d expect cheaper ones to be wooden. If they were purely “ritual” or other non-utilitarian, then I could see only metal. But there were a few stone ones, so probably wooden ones too.
They originally contained little bells. They were cat toys.
Reviving this thread to link to a fairly comprehensive surveyof available theories.
Personally I think the range finder or Astronomical device theories are the most plausible. Although the glovemaker fits the distribution of finds a bit better I guess.
Just checked: no one posting to this thread has used one of these as their avatar yet. Seems like an obvious in-board reference.