{"it":{"id":"NX-A01","name":"Roman dodecahedra","kind":"artifact","sub":"Authenticated","place":"Roman north-western provinces (no single find-spot)","lat":null,"lon":null,"date":"Roman era (2nd-4th c. AD typical; INTERPRETATION)","src":[{"t":"Wikipedia: Roman dodecahedron","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron"},{"t":"Wikidata Q12566","u":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12566"}],"tags":[],"nfacts":4,"coord_basis":"none available (left null)","sum":"Each is a small hollow bronze shape with twelve flat faces. Every face has a round hole of a different size, and every corner a small knob. They have turned up across the north of the Roman world, and no Roman writer mentions them.\n\nThe first was recorded in 1739. About 130 are now known, 33 of them in Roman Britain after a find at Norton Disney in 2023, and none in Italy. They range from 4 to 11 cm across, with holes from 6 to 40 mm, and weigh from 35 g to about 1 kg. Most date from the 2nd to the 4th century AD. In 1982 a solid silver example was found in Geneva, with the name of a sign of the zodiac on each face.\n\nWhat is hard to explain is that so many survive, so carefully made, with no text, label or picture to say what they were for.\n\nMore than fifty explanations have been offered: a survey tool, a tool for knitting gloves, a child's toy. Each runs into a problem: there are no scale marks for measuring, and spool knitting is not recorded before 1535. Michael Guggenberger and Stephen Leach, writing in 2025, read them instead as religious objects tied to the dodecahedron's place in Greek philosophy as a shape of the cosmos, and the Geneva piece, with its zodiac, at least shows that some were tied to the heavens.\n\nThe open question is how an empire that wrote so much could leave something this common without a single word.","nsrc":2,"new":1,"qs":["Over 50 explanations, no Roman text mentions them. How does a well-documented empire make an object and leave no word on what it did?","If we can lose the purpose of a Roman object, how confident should we be about the purpose of anything older?","Ritual object or measuring tool? Pick one, and say what evidence would change your mind."],"why":"A common Roman object with no surviving explanation, and the clearest current reading.","yt":"Compare hole diameters across finds.","rel":["W11A43"],"hook":"About 130 Roman bronze objects with twelve faces, and more than fifty explanations. None is written down."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"NX-A01","qs":["More than fifty explanations, and no Roman text mentions them. How does a well-documented empire leave no word on what they did?","If we can lose the purpose of a Roman object, how confident should we be about anything older?","Ritual object or tool? Pick one, and say what evidence would change your mind."],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Dodecahedron_of_unknown_use%2C_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt%2C_2nd-3rd_century_AD_-_Landesmuseum_W%C3%BCrttemberg_-_Stuttgart%2C_Germany_-_DSC02873.jpg/1280px-Dodecahedron_of_unknown_use%2C_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt%2C_2nd-3rd_century_AD_-_Landesmuseum_W%C3%BCrttemberg_-_Stuttgart%2C_Germany_-_DSC02873.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dodecahedron_of_unknown_use,_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt,_2nd-3rd_century_AD_-_Landesmuseum_W%C3%BCrttemberg_-_Stuttgart,_Germany_-_DSC02873.jpg","title":"Dodecahedron of unknown use, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 2nd-3rd century AD - Landesmuseum Württemberg - Stuttgart, Germany - DSC02873.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Daderot","cap":"Photo of Roman dodecahedra","alt":"Photo of Roman dodecahedra"}],"ms":[{"a":"Size range","v":"4-11 cm","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikipedia: Roman dodecahedron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron"},{"a":"Hole diameters","v":"6-40 mm","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikipedia: Roman dodecahedron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron"},{"a":"Mass","v":"35 g - 1 kg","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikipedia: Roman dodecahedron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron"},{"a":"material (Wikidata)","v":"bronze","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikidata Q12566","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12566"}],"aa":[],"ac":[],"src":[{"t":"Wikipedia: Roman dodecahedron","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron"},{"t":"Wikidata Q12566","u":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12566"}],"sum":"On 28 June 1739 a small bronze object was shown to the Society of Antiquaries of London. It was said to have come from a field at Aston in Hertfordshire. It was hollow, with twelve flat five-sided faces, a round hole in the middle of each face, and a small ball at every corner. It is the first Roman dodecahedron on record. Nearly three centuries later, after about 130 more have come out of the ground, nobody can say with confidence what any of them was for.\n\nThat is the strange part. The Roman world wrote a great deal down. It also left these objects, made with care and found over a wide area, and not one surviving text or picture mentions them.\n\nThe objects themselves are consistent. They are cast in metal, usually a copper alloy, by the lost-wax method, in the shape of a regular dodecahedron. They range from about 4 to 11 centimetres across. The holes in the faces vary in size on the same object, from 6 to 40 millimetres across the known examples. The lightest weighs about 35 grams, the heaviest about a kilogram. The outsides are well finished and were probably polished; the insides were left rough. Most are decorated with circles, lines and dots, most often two or three circles cut around the holes. No letters or numbers appear on any of them. They rarely show signs of wear.\n\nThe balls at the corners are not perfectly regular, which suggests they were made without a mould, and they are generally soldered to the body. There are exceptions. One from Carmarthen, in the Society of Antiquaries' own collection, was cast in a single piece, balls included. One found in London has clusters of three balls at each corner instead of one. These are not mass-produced copies of a single pattern, but the same idea made again and again by different hands.\n\nThey turn up across the north and west of the Roman world: Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. The southeasternmost find is at Deonica in Serbia. Fragments of two have been found in Slovakia, near Chotín and Hurbanovo, outside the frontier of the empire. None has been found in Italy, the Roman heartland. Most are thought to have been made in Gaul between the second and fourth centuries AD.\n\nBritain has produced a steady share. In 2023 amateur archaeologists at the village of Norton Disney in Lincolnshire found one in excellent condition, bringing the count for Roman Britain to 33. It was shown at the Lincoln Museum until October 2024.\n\nWhere they were found is often not well recorded, which matters, because context is usually the best clue to use. Where it is known, it is most often military or funerary. Others have come from baths, a theatre, a riverbed and coin hoards. One lay in a tomb next to a bone object that may have been a handle, but it was in too poor a state to lift and keep.\n\nMore than fifty explanations have been published. Each runs into trouble. A surveying instrument, for judging the distance or size of something far off, would need some marking or scale, and there is none. A frame for knitting gloves fits the holes, but the earliest known reference to spool knitting is from 1535, and the idea does not explain the use of bronze. A child's toy does not explain the care. Nineteenth-century antiquarians suggested a mace head or a missile; other scholars have pointed out they are too light to work as weapons. The finds in coin hoards suggest either that owners thought them valuable or that they had to do with coins, perhaps for checking that a coin was the right size and had not been clipped. Some have suggested a test piece by which a metalsmith showed skill, perhaps to customers or to join a guild, given the cost of bronze and the skill needed to cast one. Because most come from Gallo-Roman sites, some have suggested fortune-telling.\n\nNearly every scholar who writes on them notes the importance of the dodecahedron in classical thought, where the shape was linked to the cosmos, and many think a ritual purpose is likely. In 2025 Michael Guggenberger and Stephen Leach, writing in The Antiquaries Journal, argued that the objects were religious, tied to that philosophical meaning of the shape. One find gives that reading some support. In 1982 a solid silver dodecahedron was found in Geneva, with the name of a sign of the zodiac inscribed on each face. Twelve faces, twelve signs. At least one of these objects was tied to the heavens.\n\nThere are relatives, too. A Roman icosahedron, a twenty-sided hollow bronze object with balls at the corners, was long misclassified as a dodecahedron. It came from near Arloff in Germany and is in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn. Only two of its opposite faces have holes, and three of its knobs, set around one face, are larger than the rest, so it seems to have had a right way up: standing on its three large feet, its larger hole sits at the top. In 2009 metal detectorists in France reported a similar but spherical object from Saint-Trivier-de-Courtes, with triangular and pentagonal holes. Researchers have also compared them with the carved stone balls of Scotland, with Gallo-Roman sceptre heads from Sturton by Stow and Suffolk, and with a dodecahedron from Ptolemaic Egypt.\n\nThe most intriguing relatives are far to the east. Smaller dodecahedra made of gold, with the same holes and knobs, have been found in Southeast Asia along the maritime trade routes, and the earliest seem to date from Roman times. At Óc Eo in Vietnam the archaeologist Louis Malleret found examples and concluded they reflected the influence of Mediterranean trade on the economy of Funan. Similar gold pieces are known from Burma, China, India and Thailand. The same twelve-sided shape, with the same holes and knobs, turns up at the far end of the sea trade routes.\n\nSo the object is known in detail: its metal, its method, its range and its date. What it meant to the people who made and kept it has been lost, while gold versions of it turn up far beyond the empire. Picture the Geneva piece in a hand: silver, solid, twelve faces each carrying the name of a star sign, turning slowly so that the zodiac passes, sign by sign, under the thumb."},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":null,"hs":{},"lh":{"s":"img/h/NX-A01.webp","w":1280,"h":1023,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Dodecahedron_of_unknown_use%2C_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt%2C_2nd-3rd_century_AD_-_Landesmuseum_W%C3%BCrttemberg_-_Stuttgart%2C_Germany_-_DSC02873.jpg/1280px-Dodecahedron_of_unknown_use%2C_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt%2C_2nd-3rd_century_AD_-_Landesmuseum_W%C3%BCrttemberg_-_Stuttgart%2C_Germany_-_DSC02873.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}