The Twelve-Sided Object Rome Never Explained

2026-08-14 · Impossible Objects · 7 min read

In June 2023, volunteers from the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group were closing out a community excavation in a field at Potter Hill, near the village of Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, England. The trench had already yielded the ordinary residue of Roman rural life: potsherds, animal bone, building rubble. Then, in the final days of the dig, a heavy corroded lump came out of a pit. Cleaned, it turned out to be hollow and twelve-sided. Every one of its twelve pentagonal faces was pierced by a round hole, and no two holes were the same diameter. At each of its twenty corners sat a small knob.

The object stands about 8 centimetres tall and weighs 245 grams, which makes it one of the largest and heaviest examples ever recovered in Britain and, after some 1,700 years underground, one of the most complete. Analysis showed an unusual alloy: roughly 63 percent copper and 27 percent lead, with traces of other metals. The high lead content would have helped the molten metal flow into a complicated mould, which suggests a caster who knew exactly what the shape demanded. The finders understood at once what they were holding, because objects of this kind have been surfacing in Europe for nearly three centuries. What nobody could tell them, in 2023 or today, was what it was for.

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