## 5 Conclusions  
The very unusual dice found in Castello d'Annone, bearing Etruscan letters and randomly distributed dots (Figure 2), is a _unicum_ that may be somehow compared to the well-known Etruscan dice with numbers in letters from Toscanella, discussed by various authors and interpreted as being used for ritual or divinatory purposes (28,29). The same function has been suggested for the inscribed dice from Castello di Annone (12). The features of these dice reflect contact with the Etruscan culture, although it is made of ceramic, which is not employed in the making of Etruscan dice. The presence of unnumbered ceramic dice in the site, and the peculiarity of the marks suggest a local production. The ceramic dice from Villa del Foro with irregular numbers of points, that are not well readable on three faces (Figure 1d), differs from all the other dice found in the settlement, and possibly it was used for similar ritual or divinatory purposes as the Castello di Annone dice bearing letters and signs.  
Overall, the materials analysis of the small ceramic objects excavated from the Villa del Foro archaeological site confirms their exceptional importance both for the large quantity of recovered finds and for the reconstruction of the social and cultural context of this \"emporium\". Based on the measured data and the archaeological information, it is proposed that the ceramic pieces, in the form of washers, spheres, and uninscribed cubes, were used as counters in board games. The use of these objects as tokens for computation cannot be excluded, although in our opinion it is considered less probable for several reasons. At first, the recovery of two dice with numbers from 1-6 testify to the presence of ludic activities in the site. Moreover, in the Etruscan world game counters were widespread and often found in association with dice, as discussed below. The connection of Villa del Foro with the Etruscan culture is proved by different finds recovered in the site (9) and by the presence of cubic dice with numbering 1-6 and a configuration in agreement with the \"_sum 7 rule_\". It is therefore probable that the numerous ceramic washers, cubes and spheres had the same function as the Etruscan counters made with different materials. The red or white color intentionally given to some sphere and cubes from Villa del Foro support this idea.  
Figure 7: The dice VF14.SP386D 9 from Villa del Foro, with numbers 1–6 incised in the 1-6 2-4 3-5 configuration. Scale bar: 4 mm.  
No remains of the board were found in Villa del Foro or in other sites in Northern Italy or in the Etruscan territories; so it is impossible to know what kind of game was played. On the other hand, the use of board games is well proven by the presence of numerous counters made with different colors and materials (often associated with dice), found in Etruscan tombs [10; 11; 19; 22; 27]. Based on the iconographic study of ceramic decorations and on a few engraving in stone found mainly in Greek and Roman contests, many studies and hypotheses of the types of board game used have been published (e.g., [1; 3; 18; 21]). Likely, the same or similar types of board games were played in Villa del Foro.  
Conceptualization, I.A., C.B., M.V. and G.A.; methodology, I.A., C.B.; formal analysis, I.A., C.B.; investigation, I.A., C.B.; resources, I.A., G.A.; data curation, I.A.; writing--original draft preparation, G.A.; writing--review and editing, G.A., I.A., C.B., M.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
[PERSON] (Universita di Padova) is acknowledged for help in the measurement with multispectral images. We thank the four anonymous referees who improved the quality of the paper.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.