Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray,

your weekly fix of ancient warfare related ranting and raving and my attempted question answering.

That's what I do here.

I attempt to answer a question from a reader, viewer or listener of either the Ancient Warfare podcast or Ancient Warfare magazine. You can ask me a question. You can send me a postcard. You can send me an email. AWA at ancient warfare.com will get to us. You can comment on a previous video or podcast and they will wing their way to meet. This question today comes from Bree.

Hi, Bree.

Thank you for your question.

Besides communicating orders and psychological warfare, what role and status did trumpeters

have in warfare?

Did they have sidearms like musicians of early modern warfare?

The Gallic Carnix is of particular interest to me in this regard. Okay. Right, so the Gallic Carnix is of particular interest to me in this regard.

Okay.

Right.

So the Gallic Carnix that she mentions, the pre-mentioned, is, of course, one that was found

or was announced as having been found only in January this year, 2026, in case you're watching this in the future.

And so it's the third Carnix found in Britain, but it's the most complete ever found.

It's also part of it was another find, which I'll get to in a second, which is kind of a third part to our Warpigs series, which I didn't know was a series,

but I'll get to that in a minute.

So near Thetford in West Norfolk, there were the Carnix, a boar's head standard, five shield

bosses and an iron object of unknown function.

Dated between 50 BC and 50 AD.

Now the Carnix, of course, is a Celtic war trumpet standing up to two metres tall, loud,

brassy sound.

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