1781: "The Carnyx"

0:00An army could announce itself without a single word. Before the first warrior came into view an unfamiliar sound, it might be already caring across the battlefield. Coming from a very long bronze horn held high above the men, at the very top was the head of an animal, sometimes a wild boar with its jaws open. And the sound became straight from its mouth. The instrument was called the Carnix. It was used by Celtic people during the last centuries BC and into the Roman period. The Carnix was a long metal trumpet that could stand roughly 10 feet or 3 meters tall. Many were played vertically with their animal heads raised above the warriors. The council described the noise of Celtic war horns and images of the Carnix appear

1:01on Roman monuments and Celtic coins. But those images could tell historians only so much about an instrument that had largely disappeared. One important piece survived near Deskford, Scotland, where bronze boars head was discovered in 1816. It at once formed the bell of a Carnix and its construction offered many clues about how the instrument worked. The lower jaw was hinged and a movable tongue could add a rattling quality to the sound. In the early 1990s, a team led by musicologist John Perser, the use that Deskford had as the basis for reconstruction. In 1993, musician John Kenny played the resulting instrument bringing the sound of the Carnix back after nearly 2,000 years. It could produce sustained notes, change pitch, and had a wide range of sounds. The animal head was more than a decoration, although the exact sound of an ancient Carnix.

2:02It actually remains impossible to establish with certainty. But then, in 2004, archaeologists working with Tantiac in Central France uncovered a deposit of ancient metal objects at a galaxy sanctuary. Among them were pieces of seven Carnixes, including enough material to recover one instrument almost completely. The Carnix had bore-shaped heads, while another had a serpent-like head. The discovery gave researchers substantial remains of several instruments found together in a documented archaeological setting, and their construction also showed that the Carnix was not limited to a single design. Now, one of the Tantiac instruments appears to have been played at an angle closer to horizontal rather than held straight up. The location of the discovery offered even yet another clue. The instruments were part of a deposit at a sanctuary, alongside many other metal objects, including weapons. And their presence there connected them to ritual activity, although archaeologists cannot

3:05say precisely how they were used during ceremonies or why they were eventually deposited there. The Carnix was certainly associated with warfare, but the remains of Tantiac placed it within the ceremonial life of Celtic communities as well. We cannot establish which use came first, or whether every community treated the instrument in the exact same way. But what the discoveries have given us is a fuller understanding of an instrument that had long been known largely through the accounts of images left by others, because many who heard it, died on the battlefield. The Deskbird reconstruction allowed people to hear a Carnix again, and discoveries archeologically they revealed more about how these instruments were made and where they belonged. We can now build them, play them, and hear the remarkable range of sounds that they can produce. But what we cannot recover is everything those sounds meant to the people who first heard

4:08them. These are interesting things with JC.