The Carnyx in Early Iron Age Britain
One of the most spectacular pieces of martial equipment in use among the Celtic peoples in the later stages of the La Tène culture was the animal-headed war-trumpet, the name of which, in Greek versions, has been preserved variously as karnon or karnyx. In the latter form, the name carnyx has been applied by archaeologists to the fairly plentiful representations and the very few surviving fragments of such instruments. Of the latter, the best-known is that represented today only by drawings and engravings, dredged from the river Witham at Tattershall Ferry in 1768. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss this object once again, and also to put forward the suggestion that the sheet-bronze object in the form of a boar's head, found at the beginning of the nineteenth century at Deskford in Banffshire and fortunately still surviving, is in fact the mouthpiece of another carnyx.