Astragalomancy
Divination with knucklebones, the ankle bones of sheep or goats, used as early dice.
Also: knucklebones, astragali, dice oracles
Astragali are small ankle bones from sheep and goats. In the ancient Mediterranean they served both as playing pieces and as dice, because each bone lands on one of four faces. Pausanias, a Greek traveller of the second century CE, describes an oracle of Heracles at Bura where a petitioner threw knucklebones and read the result from a table of verses. Similar sets of numbered dice and answers survive from Roman Anatolia, where inscriptions list the answer for each throw. The practice sits close to cleromancy, the use of lots. Knucklebone games are still played by children in many countries. Some scholars see the oracle dice as the origin of later dice games, though the link is hard to prove.