The Artifact: Roman Dodecahedrons

In this episode of STBYM’s The Artifact, Robert discusses the mysterious Roman dodecahedra… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi. My name is Robert Lamb, and this is the Artifact,
a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. Now.
We haven't considered an artifact on the show in a while,
so I'd like to turn to one that my wife recommended.
The Roman do decahedra, also classified as Gallo Roman do decahedra,

(00:35):
These are undeniably strange looking artifacts from the second through
fourth century CE, and they're made all the strangers since
their exact purpose remains an unsolved mystery. Refreshingly, I actually
did run across any alien, time travel, lizard man conspiracy
theories regarding these items. But so abstract are the artifacts,
and indeed so undocumented in contemporary writings of the time

(00:59):
that they've inspire numerous largely plausible hypotheses about their purpose.
When you can safely do so, look up a photo
of the artifacts in question. They're typically small, hollow objects
with twelve flat pentagonal faces cast from a copper alloy.
Each face features a whole of differing size, and each

(01:20):
corner features a little knob. The overall vibe that I
get from this is that of a twelve sided dice
smashed up with an ancient Roman lament configuration with a
dash of ornate incense burner, and I don't know a
Bronze age coronavirus model. It's strange, and there's not just
one Roman dough decahedron. According to a January twenty twenty

(01:44):
four Smithsonian Magazine article by Sonia Anderson, another mysterious Roman
do decahedron has been unearthed in England. The current total
stands at more than one hundred, one hundred and thirty
from throughout the Roman Empire's northwest provinces and thirty three
from Roman Britain. As we've discussed done stuff to blow
your mind before, we sometimes encounter artifacts that seem to
have been objects of pure novelty, one off inventions and

(02:07):
so forth. But with more than one hundred of these
items the Do decahedra, it would seem to have served
some purpose for various people in the Roman Empire. So
what was it? Again? We don't know for sure, but
we have plenty of interesting theories to consider. I'm not
going to run through all of them here, but let's

(02:28):
talk about some of the most interesting. First of all,
it's reasonable to assume anything that the Romans were into
might have been tied to the art of war, and
it has been proposed that these could have been weapons
of some sort, or you know, the ends of maces,
or even a projectile. But others have countered that these
artifacts were largely too light, too fragile, and lack evidence

(02:52):
of wear and tear from such usage. Likewise, this interpretation
would tend to disqualify various other tool relation theories. Certainly,
one could argue that something like this could be a
mere ceremonial model of an otherwise robust tool or weapon.
But if that were the case, surely we'd have some
evidence of the actual tool or weapon. Of course, we know,

(03:14):
as the Romans certainly did that warfare isn't just about
blunt instruments. Indeed, one major theory holds that the dodecahedral
were used for measuring distance or even time. However, the
dodecahedra don't feature standardized dimensions, which makes these explanations more complicated.
But what if the artifacts do not concern the mundane
world of space and time at all, but rather the

(03:36):
unseen world of religion that, as Andersen points out, is
another favorite theory that the artifacts were ritualistic items that
needed no more uniformity of dimension or durability than any
other holy symbol. All of this would also match up
with the lack of wear and tear, as well as
their proximity to temple sites. In some finds, it's even

(03:58):
possible that they served as divinitive dice, indeed a kind
of spiritually charged D twelve religion check if you will.
One of the more amusing theories concerns neither war nor spirituality, however,
but rather some form of fiber art, fiber crafting, maybe
something like knitting. With the advent of both three D
printing and online video, you'll find some folks online demonstrating

(04:22):
how these artifacts could have been used to knit, say, gloves,
particularly the fingers of gloves. While undeniably a fun idea,
this one doesn't seem to be widely accepted, and indeed,
knitting wouldn't be invented for about a thousand years. Still,
you can't help but love the ambiguity of an artifact
that leads to such varied interpretations as things for making

(04:45):
gloves to a model of the known universe, even if
the more likely explanations may land somewhere between religious symbol
and pure novelty. Tune in to additional episodes of the Artifact,
the Monster Fact Mammalias to Pendium each week. As always,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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