I have a few cast coins with knuckle-bones on them. In addition, I have one bronze and one silvered knuckle-bone. Thanks to a package that arrived just before Christmas, I have one in lead and five in bone. It was sure nice of my wife to buy me these for Christmas (without knowing it). from l to r: bronze ax or digging tool, top row - three bone pieces, bottom row - lead piece and two bone pieces. When tossed (like dice), knuckle-bones can land on one of four different sides. They are not likely to land on the two rounded ends. All of the bone pieces have weights added. Two have weight on one of the smaller side. Two have weights on one of the larger side. One has weight extending from both of the larger sides. I am not sure how the weights change odds, but I bet someone knew at one time. This cast coin shows two of the larger sides of an Astragalus, or knuckle-bone. The top pieces are the silvered and bronze knuckle-bones. The bottom two are examples of the same cast coin one showing a shell, on the left, and a one showing a knuckle-bone, on the right.
I think these astragaloi are extremely cool and a cast coin with a knuckle bone is pretty high up on my want list.
This is my only Knucklebone. (The device behind Athena's head.) It is described as being used as a gaming token in antiquity.
Very cool OP-examples, rrd ... oh, and that's also a very cool knuckle-bone stater as well, Noob (very cool coin)
I tried to explain the game of knucklebones to my students. In an age of iPhones, I'm not sure there was anything so foreign to them.., Awesome pick-ups rr!
neat! since the bone is from the ankle, why did they call it "knuckle bones"? i was trying to figure it out here on wikipedia to no avail. they had this pic of a cool 2nd century statue i'd seen before, if you haven't seen it, it's a little girl playing with some.
Knuckle-bones were used in children's games (like the pic above, thanks Chrismat 71), gambling (like we use dice today) and in divination. A couple of links that show this: This web site has a couple of videos of children playing - http://riowang.blogspot.com/2011/05/five-stones.html “stone throwing”, was also a popular children’s game in Argentina throughout the 20th century, players toss one of five stones and then pick up the others one by one before the tossed stone falls back. When all five have been picked up, they have to pick them up two by two, then three together plus one. Once they succesfully did it, there comes the tanteo, the “extra”, with a variety of tasks: for example, they also have to toss up the stones laying on the earth, or throw all five in the air and grasp them all.
Perhaps they are called that because they look like knuckles? Maybe its because some forms of playing include holding them on top of your fingers? As rrdenarius said, Argentina still has some of these games. Gauchos still use knuckle bones to play as dice. They call them "tabas" and they use to attach some bronze tops on the flat sides, just for decoration. There even was a time where these were so on demand that they began to make them in lead or plastic. It is a game brought by the spaniards whom I believe still play this kind of games too.
Sounds a bit like "Jacks" ... knuckle-bones were ancient jacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knucklebones rrd => man, they're so very fricken cool ... I'm totally jealous of the sweet OP-jacks!! (awesome knuckle-bones)
not sure if the "dots" were weights to unbalance them. Could they had been just markings for sides of the dice? Perhaps filled with filth after so long and appeared to be inserted weights?
