Anthropology
Related: About this forumNewcastle student investigates Roman 12-sided 'mystery objects'
Published on: 9 January 2024
A Newcastle University doctoral student will appear on BBC 2s Digging for Britain to share her expertise on mysterious Roman artefacts called dodecahedra.
The Norton Disney dodecahedron featured in 'Digging for Britain'. Image courtesy of Lorena Hitchens.
Lorena Hitchens was invited to appear on the programme following the discovery of a dodecahedron during an archaeological excavation in Lincolnshire.
To date, about 130 dodecahedra have been documented between the 18th and 21st centuries. All of them were discovered across what was the north-western edge of the Roman empire, mostly in the provinces of Britannia, Gaul, and Germania (now England and Wales, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany.
Over thirty of the objects or fragments have been discovered in Britain - one of these, which was unearthed in Newcastle in the 1970s, is now on display at the Corbridge Roman Town museum, alongside two others from sites along Hadrians Wall.
Roman dodecahedra are complex, 12-sided, hollow bronze 'mystery objects' dating to the late Roman Empire. Each dodecahedron varies in size and decoration, and all have variable-size holes in each face and studs at each corner. They are all unique in their size and weight, ranging in size from a golf ball to a cricket ball.
More:
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2024/01/diggingforbritaindodecahedron/
bucolic_frolic
(47,748 posts)GreenWave
(9,528 posts)Deep State Witch
(11,397 posts)I don't know what they were actually used for, but they make a handy device for knitting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gzrmwk/in_which_the_galloroman_dodecahedra_are_used_for/
Judi Lynn
(162,585 posts)Thank you for the link, too.