There are so many unusual, interesting, and new things you can find – if you just look around a little bit. And libraries are all about mysteries! So, we are looking at a real-life small mystery each week and bringing some library resources to help add some clarity and some thought.

This week we are looking at an archeological mystery. It’s so easy to feel like we are the culmination of history – that everything that has occurred on the planet has led to us, some very advanced people. But there is so much we don’t know, even about our very own history.

This is definitely revealed when we find objects buried in the ground, or even lost in an archive, but have no idea what it is or what it was used for. And this leads us to the mysterious dodecahedrons, found buried in England – leftovers from the Roman occupiers.

We are putting an excerpt from an article below, and you can read the entire thing here.

“The first Roman dodecahedron to intrigue archaeologists was found almost 300 years ago, buried in a field in the English countryside along with some ancient coins. “A piece of mixed metal, or ancient brass, consisting of 12 equal sides,” read the description of the egg-sized object when it was presented to the Society of Antiquaries in London in 1739. The 12 faces had “an equal number of perforations within them, all of unequal diameters, but opposite to one another … every faceing had a knobb or little ball fixed to it.” The antiquarians were flummoxed by the finely crafted metal shell, and what its purpose may have been.

The 1739 dodecahedron was far from the last discovery of its kind. More than 100 similar objects have since been found at dozens of sites across northern Europe dating to around the 1st to 5th centuries CE. Ranging in size from about a golf ball to a bit larger than a baseball, each one has 12 equally sized faces, and each face has a hole of varying diameter. The objects themselves are all hollow.

By the mid-19th century, as more were found, the objects became known to archaeologists as dodecahedrons, from the Greek for “12 faces.” They’re on display today in dozens of museums and archaeological collections throughout Europe, although given how little is known about them, their explanatory labels tend to be brief.

What’s more, they have no paper trail. Historians have found no written documentation of the dodecahedrons in any historical sources. That void has encouraged dozens of competing, and sometimes colorful, theories about their purpose, from military banner ornaments to candleholders to props used in magic spells. The obvious craftsmanship that went into them—at a time when metal objects were expensive and difficult to make—has prompted many researchers to argue they were valuable, an idea that’s supported by the fact that several have been found stashed away with Roman-era coins. But that still doesn’t explain why they were made.”

What kinds of programs could you do in the library, starting off from this small mystery?

• Host a mystery book group
• Put up a display of books about archeology, about the Roman Empire, or about mysterious things in general
• Have students/patrons write stories with their theories about the purpose of these items
• Use some art supplies to let everyone draw their own dodecahedron, or to make one of their own
• Go outside, and do some archeology with students – doing some digging, looking around and theorizing about different structures
• Have students write a mystery book, and record them as podcasts or videos to share
• Look up some history about your area, and all the different people who have been there before today. One place to start is the Whose Land Am I On website, and also look at other times in history to see all the different people and cultures in your area