Those are objects from the Roman Empire. About 130 have been found in total.
They are typically made of brass and fit in the hand but can vary from 35 grams to a kilo. Each side has holes of different sizes with rings around them. On each corner you will find a sphere protruding.
But there are three things you won’t find.
- you won’t find them in or near the capital. They are found all over the European part of the empire including Britain, but never once in the Near East or African portions of the empire and also never in what we call Italy today.
- you won’t find why they exist. There is no known use for them that survives scrutiny. But you will find lots of speculation.
- you won’t find any markings. No labeles, no symbols, no gauges, or numbers. Just holes with rings.
Are they part of a mystery colt, some rather expensive game piece, blacksmith training? No one knows.
Find a 3D print file and make one yourself and ponder it for a while. Or draw one. I haven’t found any woodworking plans. Maybe I could fix that.
Micron, A5.
I’m a knitter. I can knit higher quality fingered gloves with double pointed needles (pointy sticks) way faster than anyone can use this as a jig to knit fingered gloves. And this idea completely ignores the existence of the different sized holes with the ring outlines.
Gloves were needed throughout the whole empire. But these don’t show up throughout it. Knitting was pretty much limited to Coptic stitching on sock toes at the end of the Roman period. These objects aren’t found near any Coptic area. Weaving and leather were the default materials for gloves. Knitting didn’t really start until 3rd century. These show up a century before that.
So we have to ignore a lot about their design, age, geographic distribution and the inferior quality of the knitted results to accept they were used for knitting. Knitting doesn’t pass the sniff test as a use for these long before we even get into issues like why they are never found where textile work takes place, aka around women.