this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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HistoryArtifacts
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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
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Ok, the d20 I believed, but this? There's no way. It's just modeled after something to look ancient Roman, right?
Yeah, I don't want to be overly skeptical, but for some reason this seems way too cool to be true. But I really hope it's a real artifact
Real as can be!
The Romans loved dicing. Most often in the form of gambling, but sometimes just for fun.
How do they date stuff like this anyway? Just examining the way it's made?
Mixture of factors. Activity at certain sites for one - if you know that a villa wasn't built until the reign of Tiberius, then you can figure pretty strongly that finds of Roman make at the site are contemporary with or post-date Tiberius. That sort of thing.
But there are also strong stylistic trends in many manufactured goods - pottery is a big one that can be traced like this.
For this one, I don't know the specifics (and I'm sure some of the specifics would be beyond me), but the Picts are not referenced in Roman writings until the late 3rd century AD, so it almost certainly post-dates the 3rd century by that alone.
You can't have some cagey bastard fudging the rolls when you're gambling! Make him use... THE TOWER