Same one - the village of Norton Disney.
Brrr. There’s a name to conjure with!
They produce the world’s only antivirus for a mouse.
There are no wear marks on any example that I have seen. If they had a previous use, they did not have a use when these were kept. They we not used for braiding rope, making gloves, or any other use. They were an ornametal thing that sat on the shelf.
Show me one with wear marks on it, and we can begin to guess what it was used for.
I contend that there are too many oddities to set on a shelf. And aren’t they found on battlefields?
Bronze is pretty hard. If they were used with wood or cotton or fingers or whatever, there might not be any wear marks.
That would depend on how much they were used. Only used for a short time or infrequently, likely no visible wear marks. Used often for a long time, even bronze will show wear marks from soft things like cotton or fingers.
The wear marks bronze will show are places where the patina is polished off. But if you put wear marks on it, and then let it sit for another millennium or two, and it’ll get a new patina. You might be able to find traces of the wear marks through some sort of scan, but it won’t be visible to the naked eye.
I could see one sitting next to a “Live, Laugh, Love” placard.
For the many examples that are not intact, the damage is consistent only with corrosion and breakage, not with wear?
It makes sense simply as a soldier’s candle holder. Not knowing what size candles might be available to them in the field, having several sizes of hole to choose from is handy.
And a commander would have a larger one to set on a table for meetings rather than a small one inside a little tent.
It would be really interesting if there was a collected set of measurements for all the dodecahedrons so far found. Given the wide range of overall sizes it is pretty clear that a few theories don’t hold water. Knitting guides make no sense unless there was a need to make gloves for mice. Similarly, the idea that it was an angle measuring device, a dioptron, makes little sense when the smaller devices are considered. Much more useful and accurate devices could be constructed easily. Indeed any sort of physical utility doesn’t match the existence of smaller instances.
One does notice that there is an apparently consistent effort to make the holes of different diameters. Sometimes with more success than others. But the layout of holes (so far as I can see, on the few I have seen with enough information) don’t have a consistent layout. Nor does any of the ornamentation appear to try to label the holes to disambiguate holes of similar size.
One thus suspects that there is a desire to, at least notionally, provide an artefact with 12 distinct sides. But beyond that, the different sizes likely don’t figure into the use. That would reinforce the idea of a symbolic nature to the design. 12 is a difficult number. We run into the Strong Law of Small Numbers. We don’t have enough Platonic solids to match up with possible meaningful numbers. Whilst it is tempting to align the number of sides with say astrological signs, there is no useful evidence.
But there is a lot of magic in the geometry, and it isn’t impossible, that rather like magic squares, the simple display of the numerical nature of the solid was considered to have some value. But the rarity of the artefacts is also puzzling.
They would make crappy candle holders. And no wax (which can survive) was ever found with any of them.
They do make handy tools for knitting gloves. Also measuring distances.
Not that small, maybe small womens fingers.
My wife is a knitter, and she thinks knitting tools, and she insists they would work.
Mind you, that doesnt mean they are knitting tools, just that they would work as such.
The size variation is reasonably large. 1.5 to 4.5 inches (4 to 11cm) across - so a three to one variation. That suggests that the size of the thing wasn’t important. The small ones just don’t seem viable for a lot of the ideas being posited.
Found in the village of Norton Disney.
Mickey Mouse wears gloves.
It all falls into place.
Now I want to go looking for one. Unfortunaely the Romans never invaded around here.
Yes. That was a quite interesting diversion. Thanks, Mr. Dibble.
Are they that rare? The Norton Disney one makes 33 in Britain alone, and 116 total.
You’d need to explain why soldiers in other parts of the Empire never used it, then…
They do not seem to have been utile, as in being useful, as in having a use. Thus my comment about wear.
So,what were they used for? Where are the wear marks? They do not seem, to me, to have had an actual use. Like trying to figure out what a fidget spinner or a Slinky was for. Maybe it was a toy.
They were a Toy! Given away in boxes of Gruel.
I seem to remember that the followers of Pythagoras afforded him almost mystical status, and that some of his discoveries were kept secret from the general public. Reading Wikipedia, I see that a follower of Pythagoras called Hipparsus is said to revealed the construction of a dodecahedron from a sphere, then accidentally drowned (as a punishment from the gods of mathematics?)
Perhaps dodecahedrons were some kind of mystical talisman revered by his followers, or by some other sect. These objects are concentrated in Britain and Western Europe; was it a bizarre local cult?