The things that make it tricky: 1) They're not found with wear-marks, so they couldn't have been done for anything laborious like wire-weaving. 2) They've got

The things that make it tricky: 1) They're not found with wear-marks, so they couldn't have been done for anything laborious like wire-weaving. 2) They've got no size markings and don't match each other, so they couldn't have been used for anything standardized. The holes of opposing sides don't have matching sizes. 3) Platonic solids have religious significance, so they may have been deliberately impractical (but if it's a tool where's the practical peasant version of it? Like a series of plates?) 4) They're found primarily in and around Rome's Celtic holdings, not Rome itself. 5) They're expensive so they're probably not just measuring grapes. So the first question is, beyond cultural significance, why make them a platonic solid? It guarantees the distance between the opposing sides is consistent, while allowing you to carry 6 different hole-pairs all with that same "distance" in a single object. But it can't be a measuring tool because of fact (2). And if there's no good reason for it to be a platonic solid, why haven't they found any non-platonic-solid versions of them? Maybe it's the gamer in me but I think it's some kind of gambling game based on the irregularity of coinage. Roll the thingamajig, drop in a coin that goes through the top but not the bottom. I mean it was found around military camps and caches of coins, right? Casino game.