Witchy Memes

Here's a recent HN thread about the objects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937540

Metalworker status symbol seems compelling, as it explains several facts about them, and the knitting angle could be a chicken vs egg situation. Either knitters found an existing and relatively common object to be useful for their needs, or knitting is older than we think and the need for these tools drove metalworkers to decide that a hard-to-make tool was a good status symbol. Or maybe it's both/and, with both needs influencing each other. I can easily imagine some metalworking culture deciding that this hard-to-make tool is a good status symbol, and they eventually turn it into something that's not actually useful for the original purpose, but works great to show off.