The History Blog

> Ok but that means there would be more such objects, for every level before mastery right?

What levels of mastery? Roman historians didn't write much about the ins and outs of their metalworking industry so we don't know how intricate the process was but apprentices graduating is rather universal (their teachers get tired of them or die eventually, after all).

> And also such objects would be much more rare. Imagine all the objects that have been found and melted down during the last 2000 years. For us to have found over 100 of these so far is already an indication that it was a lot more common than an apprentice piece.

Finding only a hundred of these makes them extremely rare. Check out Wikipedia's non-exhaustive list of museum collections of ancient Roman and Greek artifacts [1]. The collections number in the tens of thousands of objects each and that's just the stuff they felt was worth keeping in their collections - there is tons more Roman artifacts on the antiquities market and huge troves are still discovered on a regular basis [2][3]. As far as I know there are only a handful of Roman dodecahedrons in private hands which makes them even rarer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_of_Greek_and_Roman_antiquities

[2] https://www.ksl.com/article/24751877/10k-roman-artifacts-found-in-lost-london-river

[3] https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/60269

Two other points that might be worth further exploration:

* There was an article on Hacker News recently about the historical cost of clothing, how it used to cost thousands of modern-equivalent dollars for a shirt. Thus why people wore clothing until it was rags. The cost of clothing and all such goods came down dramatically due to peoples' specialization as spinners, weavers, sewers, tailors, etc. Now clothing is cheap and plentiful.

[Update: found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8940950 ]

* There was another HN thread discussing the fall of the Roman empire and the "dark ages". A commentator who seemed to be a historian reinforced the idea that yes, there really was a dark ages. The fall of the empire shut down trade, which led to a marked decline in the pottery available in Britain. Previously they had been able to import plentiful, high quality pottery from elsewhere. With the fall of the empire and the collapse of trade, they began to make it themselves, and were terrible at it. Even the kings of the era had worse pottery than the common person centuries earlier. (This is more about trade than about cities, but the effectiveness of trade increases with density.)

[Update: not the HN comment I was looking for, but similar information about pottery: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/1391 ]

The power of specialization and trade

Not only for a surprisingly long time, but also in surprisingly good condition. For example at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall archeologists have found not one or two, or even ten but over 5000 amazingly preserved Roman shoes that were apparently thrown away into the fortress's moat and survived buried in the mud <https://www.vindolanda.com/Blog/the-curators-favourite-shoes>.

Hilariously they're never found a pair of shoes, only singles. So that's why they think they were thrown away as rubbish, because one shoe broke so they threw it in the ditch. In the museum on site there's a fantastic "wall of shoes" on display where you can see the amazing leatherwork from 2000 years ago <https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/37305>.

Amazing to see all of the things kids have been finding these days!

Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin
https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/75848

‘It Had Teeth’: A 3-Year-Old Discovers Ancient Treasure in Israel
While on a hike with her family, a child stumbled across a 3,800-year-old Egyptian amulet. It will go on display in an upcoming exhibition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/world/middleeast/child-ancient-discovery-israel.html

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids scream with excitement after finding 2,000-year-old coins in West Bank cave
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/sarah-huckabee-sanders-kids-scream-excitement-unearthing-2000-year-old-treasure-west-bank-cave