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That's where my mind went too. Just imaging how they got the balls on there. Was it one piece? Many pieces? How did they keep it from warping? How many attempts would it take? Crazy to think it was made at all

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.

Honestly, that's one of the weather theories proposed.

I had to fight to keep outlines to an absolute minimum.

I'd hate to find out it's a game piece you toss dice into. I kinda like it as a mystery object. A true cult object.

The ones in Germania have almost all been found in the Roman bits of Germania (i.e. east of the Rhine), and Roman Britain is the other big area for them, so it does seem like they're at least partially Roman. They seem to be called Gallo-Roman dodecahedrons a lot of the time because of the areas they're found in, though

These don't start showing up until the 300s CE but those areas were occupied since 100 BCE. So that's a 400 year gap. And they are always found in the presence of Romans, not indigenous locals.