Full carnyx found in Norfolk, boar’s head standard –

An Iron Age metal hoard containing a complete body and a unique Boar’s Head flag standard has been discovered in Thetford, West Norfolk. It is one of only three known canises in Britain, the others are not even close to completion. In fact, with its mouthpiece, pipe and trumpet all intact, it is one of the most complete examples, if not the most complete, found in Europe. The boar’s head mark is the first to be discovered in the UK.

The canix was a vertical trumpet with a beast’s head-shaped trumpet with an open mouth, used by the Celts in battle to rally soldiers and intimidate their enemies. They were six feet tall, towering over the heads of the infantry, and the sound they made carried far. Ancient chroniclers recorded their disturbing sounds. They are depicted as Gallic icons on ancient coins and their use is shown on the Gundestrup Cauldron, a silver cauldron discovered in a Danish peat bog in 1891.

The Thetford treasure was discovered last year by a team from Pre-Construction Archeology while surveying the building site. It was removed from the earthen mass and excavated under laboratory conditions to preserve the fragile bronze pieces. Conservators at Norfolk Museum Services performed a CT scan of the block and carefully removed its contents. They unearthed a complete body, part of another body, a boar’s head mark, five shield bosses, and a mysterious iron tool that has baffled archaeologists to this day. The treasure dates back to between 50 B.C. and 50 A.D.

Newly discovered body shows signs of repair, says [Mark Hinman, chief executive of Pre-Construct Archaeology]indicating that it has been used for a long time. Although it was partially dismantled before burial, with the shield boss carefully placed on top, “the whole bell and bell are relatively intact – and it’s the only bell ever found that didn’t have the ears removed. It has these huge, fluttering ears, which are fantastic, and they’re still in place.”

“Objects like this remind us how little we know about many different aspects of our past. These objects had names, and people thought they were imbued with power. They might even have thought they were alive during certain periods of their existence—and all the stories associated with them have been lost.”

Having such a complete example will provide musicologists with a very rare opportunity to learn more about the way the canix is ​​played and the sounds it produces. The first nearly complete canix with pipe and mouthpiece was discovered in 2004 in Tintinac, south-central France, where it was found in a hoard along with six other partial canix. It was deliberately broken into 40 pieces, and when conservators put it back together, they realized it was only missing part of the tube, giving researchers their first chance to reconstruct a complete canix to figure out how it was played. Previous theoretical reconstructions have only copied the surviving bell, recreating the pipe and mouthpiece based on images found on artifacts such as coins and Gunderstrup’s cauldron. Eight years after its discovery, a replica of the Tintignac carnyx has been completed, recreating its beautiful and eerie sound.

The Thetford body has fewer fragments, but is still very fragile, so the conservation and stabilization process will be as deliberate and painstaking as the Tintinac body. The treasure was reportedly a potential treasure find. A coroner’s court will decide later this year whether it qualifies as an official treasure (it does).