Comment on it's obviously a thingamajig
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Before someone posts it, no, it’s not for knitting; there are solid ones that would have been useless for that and knitting isn’t known to have been present in the Roman Empire.
What do you mean knitting wasn’t present in the roman empire? That’s slightly less absurd than saying knots didn’t exist in the bronze age! Lack of evidence doesnt mean it’s not present! There’s lots of things we know for sure happened during the roman empire despite no one writing about it, like child baptism in early christianity. We don’t know what it looked like, but we know where it happened and that everyone was in agreement about the method.
DrSoap@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I don’t know. I knit a lot. I loom knit too by hand. There are methods for making knitted cords that use nails hammered into a circular wood.
This really looks like it’s meant to make gloves and each hole is dedicated to a different finger and a center for sleeves. Maybe it was combined with weaving and there is rope or a wooden hook that we wouldn’t see today.
I was going to 3D print one to experiment and see if I could work something out myself.
The fact that there are solid ones really throws me off though. I was dead convinced this was a knitting/weaving tool.
DrSoap@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Image
For reference, these are widely available now, but aren’t the most popular item. A multi sided one with multiple holes might do different sized cords. Possibly a mesh. Maybe gloves. I don’t know.
There is a YouTube channel I watch where this lady gets so creative with these looms that she’s managed to make just about anything, so if it was meant for knitting/weaving of some sort, you really could use it to make just about anything.
They come in many different shapes with different sized spokes and different spacing. It is faster than traditional knitting in my opinion, but harder to get complicated colorwork/patterns.
Dumnorix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Knitting is 17th century (in Europe). In Rome you’d have nalbinding as an alternative.
There’s a lot of evidence, both direct and indirect, of textile production techniques. I can recommend reading books from Karina Grömer, if you’re interested in the subject.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Knitting is a technology, and there isn’t evidence it emerged uniformly throughout the world. Think about the environment that Rome is in; what good is something knitted in a hot Mediterranean climate? We have tons of art and literature documenting weaving, which was very important to Romans, but none of knitting. If you have evidence they had it you should publish it.