It would make sense that if there were better alternatives that the other, cheaper ways to do that would win out. It's metal working, you are talking as if the gladius wasn't common in ancient Rome.

It's just intuitive for working with rope, given the shape of the spokes and the holes, in a way where it would be treated as a junction. The ones that do have the holes have different sizes, giving a glimpse of additional features being incorporated into the tool and hinting at what it might have been used for.

It's called a Roman dodecahedron, except not so much for the version of it that has no holes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/...

What I'm beginning to think is that it was designed to spin (hence the circular groves on the sides) and join smaller ropes into those of bigger sizes, with different holes adapted to different templates of sizes. The version with no holes was designed to work with less ropes and didn't need it or just simply didn't incorporate it yet. Still placing my bets on a rope rigging junction.

That it was found in places with lots of coin makes sense, places like the Roman coliseum used a shitload of rope, from the rope that would be used to hold its canopy to those that would handle the weights, counterweights, and mechanisms of its lower levels, and those places would move a lot of money. But maybe it has the more utilitarian purpose being able to create rope bundles of different sizes on demand.

Darned if I know, I'm not an antropologist, just saying what I would assume intuitively, lol