The Roman dodecahedron is an item that has turned up in a lot of sites where people do archaeology. While most items, given time, have their purpose easily or at least approximately deduced by researchers, the Roman dodecahedron’s purpose is largely baffling to even the most studied of archaeologists, who have no idea on where to start with it. This in turn would probably baffle the Romans, who would have seen it as a common household item, no different from a spoon or a comb.
Suppose a few thousand years from now, archaeologists were excavating our remains and had varying degrees of success deducing what different things were for. If you had to guess what common household item of ours would stump them the most, what item would you guess it would be?
I don’t have any great answers, only jumping off points.
But maybe something religious that looks like a utility? Crosses wouldn’t work cause they are way too ubiquitous. Gotta be something weirdly distributed.
Or maybe some sort of holiday decoration? Holidays have so much wierd lore that just wouldn’t make sense outside current society. Not sure what exactly it would be tho but feels like fertile ground
A fake Christmas tree would be pretty confusing. Or even tree stands for a real tree. Even if you figure out it’s for a tree, what purpose could that tree serve?
Elf on a shelf?