Found in June 2023, the 12 sided Norton Disney Dodecahedron is certainly  an intriguing Roman artifact uncovered in archaeology. Discovered by volunteers from the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group near Newark-on-Trent, Lincolnshire.

Key FeatureDetails
Physical DimensionsMeasures roughly 8 cm (3 inches) tall and weighs 245–254 grams.
Material CompositionCast from a heavy copper alloy containing roughly 75% copper, 18% lead, and 7% tin.
ConditionFully intact, beautifully crafted, and in pristine condition with no signs of physical wear.
Estimated AgeApproximate dating back approximately 1,700 years (4th century CE).

Archaeological Significance:

* In-Situ Discovery: Unlike the majority of the ~130 Gallo-Roman dodecahedra found across northern Europe, this example was discovered in situ within a controlled archaeological context. It was carefully deposited in a pit alongside 4th-century Roman pottery.

* Regional Rarity: It is the 33rd dodecahedron unearthed in Britain and the first ever found in the English Midlands.

* High Craftsmanship: Featuring 12 pentagonal faces with central holes of varying sizes and small metal spheres at each corner (knobs), casting it required high metallurgical expertise and deliberate effort.

There are no written records, drawings, or descriptions of dodecahedra in surviving Roman literature. Because no two known examples are identical in size or proportion, experts rule out everyday standardized uses like measuring devices or geometry tools. Lack of wear also suggests it was not a practical mechanical tool. The primary prevailing theory, usually following the absence of any other known reason among archaeologists, is that the object served a religious or ritualistic function. It may have been used as a sacred offering, a tool for fortune-telling, or a talisman to ward off bad luck, particularly given its proximity to local religious sites and earlier finds of deity figurines.

My Story

I am familiar with psychometry that has been given a name because it is a reality, not a belief that may or not be understood by the sceptical. Based on personal experience with many objects of the Romano British period, all items that have become personal possessions are imbued with impressions and emotional characteristics into the material field of the object.

As a teenager, my father and I spent many years in the 1970’s and 1980’s discovering Romano British settlements by field walking and investigating crop marks (he was a pilot) which provided distinct ground markings in the topography of farmland and fields. This progressed into the later investigations of visiting dozens of crop circles in the 1990’s. Understanding growth of crops, ground disturbance, layout of the land was of great experiencial and practical understanding of this seasonal ‘phenomena’.

Obtaining land owner’s permission, led to many autumn and winter seasons outside the seeding and harvesting periods, metal detecting and scanning the ground with sharp eyes. We found many objects and parts of objects that revealed themselves after spending the previous 2000 years buried in the soil. All objects that were found were catalogued and logged with the local museum curators of the areas covered by them, Tony Gregory – Norfolk, Dave Allen – Andover and Graham Teasdill of Bournemouth Russell Coates are the names I recall from memory. My father had a subscription to a metal detecting magazine called Treasure Hunting and we even featured in it a few times. I had a five minute spot on television – John Craven’s Newsround – which showed me as a boy extracting a roman bronze coin of Constantine from a pre-prepared hole in the ground for close up purposes.

As a youngster with a keen interest in the Ancient History that these objects would put me directly in touch with, I would absorb every presented find and picture of the artifacts and objects shown in the magazine. I would learn about the people that wore the rings and bracelets and brooches, how they lived, what they used as iron tools and cosmetic toiletries such as tweezers and finger nail scrapers. Even the smallest part of a broken object could be identified as I knew its material, its shape, its age and its use. The broken clasp of a brooch, the handle of a bronze mirror, the broken half of a silvered spoon – all identifiable, as every object told a story and I sat with each one until it told me its own. I learnt all the Roman Emperors, when they lived, the dates they ruled, their wives, their sons and what happened to them – you didn’t live long if you became emperor! Their lives were imprinted on every coin I found. Even the faintest glimpse of a coin head in the right light would allow me to recognise and identify who’s coin it belonged to, the state of the bronze, the composition, the patina, the slight corrosion (in a neutral soil). Not much escaped identification because the story was held within the object and I had learnt the stories of that time.

Most museums are reluctant to allow a complete stranger to touch their precious artifacts, and offers of identifying their personal histories by touch are obviously beyond consideration. I have lost count of how many times I have been shouted at – by guards and guides in museums, churches and temples. Those that travel or been present at these places with me, will be very familiar with this. Yes – I do understand that Do not Touch means Do NOT Touch for a reason – but the visit for me is the experience not just looking at objects with no interaction. Often it is not even in touching – but spending any amount of time at all next to one object or statue invokes the curiosity and animosity of those who believe you must be up to no good so you should move along – the power role of the ‘Jobsworth’ of museum guards and guides. This happened in the National Museum in Athens in front of the Antikythera Mechanism – I’m sure they will have CCTV of me circling round and round and round the exhibition multiple times over half an hour.

So, without touch, there are other methods to obtain information from the natural field that surrounds all physical objects, organic or material – Attunement. This requires the ability to still the mind and feel into the object in play, in movement, in construction and daily use. The emotion employed as joy when given as a gift, the relief when the carving or construction has finished, and in particular, the frustration and grief embedded towards its breaking or loss – which is the basis of the majority of objects retrieved from their final resting places in the ground. This has helped others to locate lost wedding rings, misplaced car-keys, mobile phones left in restaurants – but, interestingly enough, never my own, always other peoples. Some things just aren’t meant to work in your own favour, only others.

The Psychometry reading of the Dodecahedron

Returning to the intrigue surrounding the Dodecahedron. Firstly, I have not found one, I have not held one and I have not personally seen one up close. But I am fascinated with the constant story surrounding these objects saying that there is no knowledge of what the object is used for. I read various proposals and the subsequent conclusion when all other theories have been exhausted – that it must have been used for religious or ritual purposes. It is easy for anyone to give a guess (uneducated opinion) or theory (educated in the exact field of study) but does that mean either of them are accurate or inaccurate in what they say when the answer remains unknown. This is the assumption that a finished painting must show every stroke and every mistake used to craft its final appearance, so that the object itself can physically present its own constructive use.

So, it should not be such a great leap to move from the physical and into the metaphysical. We could even call it magic – which has been entertaining people for centuries by presenting ‘tricks’ without revealing answers. For me, the Norton Disney Dodecahedral object is made of a specific chosen material used often by the Romans, bronze, with a specific design and purpose. It presents as an instrument, multi use, heavy duty, precise and re-usable, the varying sizes of holes reveal specific forms of related measurement, it is hollow not solid which indicates interaction with its use.

Firstly, what showed itself to me is that the object is part of a triple unit, a precision made arrangement between three items. A horizontal square piece of wood which allows the dodecahedron to fit into it with an exact purpose. No matter which side of the object is chosen, it fits snuggly into its coupling. The square piece is fitted on top of a tripod which has a certain length in height, also with a purpose. Uniformity. To allow a precise measurement to be made regardless of the height of the man doing the measuring. There is also an urgency about its use – the ability to quickly move the object from one position to another on top of the tripod.

The man places the object on top of the tripod and visually looks through one of the holes at a distant object, the height of a man, roughly six roman Pes in height (5 ft 10 inches). If the man fits inside the hole exactly, his feet at the bottom and his head at the top, then the measurement has been made. If he is smaller, then the object must be switched to a smaller hole. If the man appears larger, then the object must be switched to a larger hole. The size of the hole correlates to the man’s height and the man’s height confirms the distance the man is from the observer’s tripod.

So, its purpose – a range finder using a calculated form of trigonometry. Ballistics – what angle should be used to fire the arrows, the catapult, the ballista bolt. The urgency to switch from one hole to the other quickly in the heat of battle becomes vital to calculate the constant movement of the enemy. Precision fitting, knowledge of the user to know the location of the next hole, either bigger or smaller than before, precision fitting into its coupling using the spherical knobs to match the wooden base. This is not an instrument found in established settlements and town centres. It is an instrument of war, used on the front lines to quickly determine the distance the enemy has their formation. And a man skilled in its use, can calculate the distance of a building, a wall, a tower – and in times of peace, a distant hilltop, a rise in the landscape for road layout, bridge building, distance of river banks for construction – just as the modern use of a laser measurement with a theodolite.

I note there may be slight variances in hole sizes amongst those found through Britain and Europe. I am seeing that clever minds made slight adjustments for the heights of the enemy they were fighting, landscape layout, weight of the weapon used such as arrows, ballista bolts and catapult stones. Every new version had constant adjusted revisions added based on feedback from the front line. These were deliberate variances not a clumsy mistake in their casting.

Metator Duodecim Oculorum – “the measurer of twelve eyes”

The naming of this object has been interesting and is based on what was presented:

The name of the Master that performed the rule of observer, measurer and effectively a calculator / computer shouting out the instructions of his findings – was a Metator, which is the army’s name given to the man who measured out camps and marching distances which was more a peacetime role – but would have served a great purpose at the time of battle.

The object itself was something that was looked through – so the army gave it a nickname – the ‘twelve eyed one’ which is known as ‘Duodecoculus‘.
The combination of the two would become an important role within the army’s arsenal: Metator Duodecim Oculorum, “the measurer of twelve eyes”

The Range Table

range finder

A hole of diameter d sits a fixed distance L in front of the eye. A man of height H exactly fills that hole when he stands at range D, where D = H × L ÷ d. Nothing else is needed: no graduations, no numbers cast into the metal, only twelve holes of known size and an operator who knows which hole reads which distance.

Two fixed choices make the table work in Roman units. The target is taken as six pes tall (1776 mm, roughly 5 ft 10 in). The observer stands one passus (five pes, 1480 mm) behind the tripod with his eye level with the hole, and the tripod, wooden square and object together bring the hole to five pes above the ground. With those two settings the range in passus is simply 1776 divided by the hole diameter in millimetres, so a 10 mm hole reads 178 passus and a 20 mm hole reads 89. A Roman operator would have carried twelve such pairings in his head, one per face. The height of the tripod does not enter the calculation at all; its only job is to hold the hole at a fixed eye level.

The ballista elevation follows from the range. For a bolt leaving the machine at about 55 metres per second, which is within the estimates from modern reconstructions of the scorpio and ballista, the low trajectory elevation is half the arcsine of (g × D ÷ v²). The smallest hole therefore calls for 29 degrees and the largest for under 8 degrees. These are still-air figures without drag; a calibrated machine would have carried its own correction of a few degrees.

No hole-by-hole measurements of the Norton Disney example have been published, so the twelve diameters below are estimates read from photographs and scaled to the 80 mm height of the object, running from 10 mm up to 32 mm. They can be calculated and adjusted once accurate measurements become publicised.

HoleDiameter (mm)Range (m)Range (pes)Range (passus)Ballista elevation
A1026388817829.2°
B1221974014822.6°
C1418863412718.8°
D1616455511116.1°
E181464939914.1°
F201314448912.6°
G221194048111.4°
H241103707410.4°
I26101342689.6°
J2894317638.9°
K3088296598.3°
L3282278567.7°

Target 6 pes, eye standoff 1 passus, bolt speed 55 m/s, low trajectory, no air resistance.