According to the index, the only place that mentions ** in argument lists is

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#index-1099

and gives no indication of what an object must support to allow **.

When you attempt to ** an object the real attribute exception is suppressed and you get a message

"argument after ** must be a mapping"

"mapping" is quite loosely defined. There are 3 definitions, the glossary entry seems the most complete

http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#index-625
http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#index-842
http://docs.python.org/glossary.html#term-mapping

But even the glossary entry doesn't tell you what you need for **.

Only by reading the C source code did I discover that to be usable in **, an object must implement .keys() and .__getitem__().

The docs either should add .keys() to the definition of mapping or the code should use some other term or simply allow the original exception to reach the user.