I'm just waiting for some guy to come forward and explain that he's been locating dig sites ahead of archeologists for years and planting these around just to fuck with them.
No need, it's been solved basically. You knit gloves with them. Or rather the fingers. They are only found in colder climates / up north. There are videos of people using replicas of them to knit gloves.
I feel like the point isn't that it MUST have been used for knitting (even if it could have been), but that we should be open to more possibilities before defaulting to a religious explanation.