Annoyingly, there's no wear. It's not a tool.

Also: the size of the tube in French knitting isn't controlled by the size of the hole, it's controlled by the spacing of the pegs. You have to pass the wool over the pegs, so logically the pegs should be cylindrical not round. Earliest evidence for French knitting is 1535. There's no evidence for knitting of any kind until centuries after these things.

I'm going with prentice piece, based on the lack of wear. You hang a diploma on the wall, you put a prentice piece on a shelf for 30 years and barely touch it. (Although the gold examples would argue against this, I think).

Is there any info about where the pieces were found? If they are apprentice pieces there ought to be clues in their found locations.

Why would there be wear in metal? Maybe from hands over years?

The peg spacing is a very good point and maybe the disqualifier.

I'm very dubious about the knitting claim. Woven textiles seem to go back 27,000 years. Knitting is just weaving, with fewer steps, using sticks.

I don't know if you've ever done French knitting or not, but you need to use a tool to lever the wool over the pegs. Something like a crochet hook. Traceology is the term sometimes used by archaeologists for examining this kind of wear, and they're pretty good at it - Aaron Deter-Wolf[1], for example, studies needles to determine if they were used for sewing or for tattooing.

Weaving, yes, and nålebinding is ancient (6500 BCE) but for some reason knitting doesn't seem to turn up until 10th century Egypt. Fabrics do get preserved sometimes, and knitting, like nålebinding, has the advantage of being portable. You'd think, if the technique was discovered significantly earlier, there'd be something to show it. A pair of knitting needles in a tomb somewhere, at least. After all the floors of iron age round houses seem to be littered with loom weights[2], and needles are also common finds. So where are the knitting needles?

For me, it's the gold examples that put the fly in the ointment of every theory (including my favourite). One imagines a Neopythagorean cult or something, but then you'd expect the geographic distribution to be different.

[1] https://tdoa.academia.edu/AaronDeterWolf [2] https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A26...

I don't really buy that theory. There's no explanation for why it needs to be this very-hard-to-cast bronze dodecahedron, instead of just a wooden board with pegs and holes, which is all that would be needed for the video above.

It's possible that most were made out of common materials. Only those made of something sufficiently resilient survived for us to find.

Basically a show off piece for those with enough coin!

Why not? If it was a common item, it would be natural that there a deluxe versions for e.g. the royal household.

The cheap and simple versions would have rotted away by now.

The article mentions that none of them exhibit wear marks that are characteristic of tools.

I’ve seen many vases and other such vessels in the homes of rich people that are not used to store liquids, but instead sit there empty on a console table in the hallway!

In that case this isn't a tool, it's a decoration. And if none of them are worn, then the decoration isn't imitating a knitting tool, since some would show wear if that were its actual use.

Do you think show pieces in rich households would be used?

I’d argue if they did, someone was getting fired immediately.

Have we found any other shows pieces for other household items? Because if not, it’s very unlikely that’s the case

Yes, all the time. Like silverware, ornamental swords/weapons like axes, jewelry.

Would the royal household also have decorative brass stone masons' chisels, carpenters' planes, doctors' scalpels, and farmers' sickles?

I don't really buy that theory. Do we have any other examples of fancy decorative versions of working class tools?

Anecdotally, I have seen decorative plates hanging on walls, spinning wheels, ships wheels, oil lamps, etc all used decoratively in contemporary settings.

It's not persuasive, it's impossible. Knitting was unknown to the Romans.