While these five small objects might not look important at first glance, on closer inspection they have a huge wealth of history and lore surrounding them. They are astragali, or knucklebones, and are the talus bones from sheep or goats. The talus bone is one of the group of bones known as the tarsus, which forms the lower part of the ankle joint.
Astragali have been used across the world for thousands of years, for purposes as varied as games, burials, and divination. Examples have been found all the way from the Neolithic age, and modern versions of games associated with them are still being played today, so there is a lot of history to unpack!
Most of the information available about astragali is about the games played with them over the centuries. An 800 BC terra-cotta from Tanagra, Greece, held in the British Museum, is one of the earliest depictions, and another piece from c. 300 BC Italy shows two crouching women playing a game with the pieces. We do not know when or where games played with astragali originated, but the most widely accepted theory is that they were invented independently several times. Ancient Greek tradition alone gives us multiple explanations, such as Sophocles’ idea that the mythical figure Palamedes taught it to fellow Greeks during the Trojan War, and Plato’s statement that it was supposed to have been invented by the Ancient Egyptian god Thoth.
It might be impossible to answer the question of the game’s origins, but we can give a clear explanation of how it was played, right?
Afraid not! Astragali really is a mystery, and the ways that people have played games with them over the years have often been very poorly recorded. In the sixteenth century, Polydore Vergil wrote about ‘a game… that is played with the posterne bone in the hynder foote of a sheep… whiche in Latin is called Talus… it is used of children in Northfolke’. However, he does not provide examples of how the game was played.
Budd and Newman, writing in 1941, state that these games were popular with most schoolboys and some schoolgirls up until the end of the nineteenth century, but then gradually disappeared from 1900-1940, until it was very difficult for them to find someone with any working knowledge of it at all. Even back in 1901, Lovett wrote that England had very little information available about the history of the games and how they had developed, as very few of the museums had preserved any records relating to them.
We know that numerous games were invented, presumably because these pieces of bone are the perfect size and weight to be handled, the six-sided rectangular shape in goat and sheep talus bones make them well-suited to be a throwing piece, and the flat sides mean they do not roll too much after landing. There was also a huge array of names used in different regions of England, instead of Astragals – Knucklebones (the most common) Hucklebones, Five-bones, Jacks, Jack o’ five-stones, Dibs, Dabblers, Marbles and Dubs, and many more.
Lovett appears to have a large collection of examples, demonstrating the various materials used in different places, as not everybody was able to play the game with talus bones. In fact, using bones was a status symbol for a long time, as it demonstrated that the player’s family was able to afford legs of lamb or mutton. Alternatives included phalanges of a pig, from Kent, pebbles from Worcestershire and Kent, potsherds in Yorkshire and Sussex, and even small pieces of diorite used for making roads in London and Croydon!
We do have records of how some individuals played games with them, although these are anecdotal and cannot be supported by any other evidence. However, this is the best way we can get an idea of how the game of knucklebones was played in nineteenth and early twentieth century England.
The game appears to have always been played with five bones, just like the set we have here at the museum. There were multiple different rounds, all of which had names such as ‘Chimmey’ and ‘Rocks’ which reflected the shape the bones were placed in during the game. It started with ‘Openers’, where the players held five bones in their palm, threw one in the air, and then had to catch on the back of their hand and let the others drop. This was repeated until all five bones were caught on the back of the hand. The rounds progressed in difficulty and the level of skill needed. For example, ‘Bridges’ involved four of the bones placed on the ground in a square shape. The player would throw a bone up, pick up the other four in one sweep of their hand, and then catch the last bone on the back of their hand before it fell to the ground. The hardest version appears to have been trying to pick up two bones five feet apart and still catching the falling piece, which (understandably) a lot of players simply skipped!
The more ritualised aspects of astragali do not seem to have made much impact on England, at least not from their lack of appearance in historical records. However, the practice of astragalomancy was a popular form of divination in the Mediterranean and the Near East, particularly in Ancient Greece. The process usually looked like throwing the bones into the air and attempting to interpret the result, particularly in terms of which mark ended up on top.
Although the long and varied history of astragali, or knucklebones, makes it impossible to give definitive answers on almost any part of their history, it may actually be the best thing about them. We can learn so much about the differences between times and cultures, but also the similarities, and something like this is an excellent opportunity to explore how practices travel between groups of people and adapt to their new societies!
Sources:
Budd, E. Newman, L. (1941) ‘“Knuckle-Bones”. An Old Game of Skill’, Folklore, 52, pp. 8-17.
Dandoy, J. (1996) ‘Reviews and Reports: Astragali, the Ubiquitous Gaming Pieces’, Expedition, 38 (1) pp. 51-58.
Thomas, P. et al. (2022) ‘Gaming and divination pieces, markers of ownership, or all three? Zooarchaeology and the interpretation of knuckle bones found in tombs of the Iberian necropolis of El Poblado’, Anthropozoologica, 57 (6) pp. 157-166.
Lovett, E. et al. (1901) ‘The Ancient and Modern Game of Astragals’, Folklore, 12 (3) pp. 280-293.