Roman whistles

[Caballo]

An interesting conversation last night with Tarbicus on (amongst many other things) Roman whistles. This was sparked off by the HBO programme and the difficulty of hearing verbal orders in a large formation or in battle.

Roman whistles are yet another thing that I know very little about, but I found this picture from excations at Canterbury


Also at http://www.canterburytrust.co.uk/school ... gall07.htm (keep scrolling down despite all the interesting Roman photos)

Can someone help me with more info/ other finds/ military context?

Cheers

Caballo

[Carlton Bach]

I have pictures of two bronze whistles (the ref whistle kind) from Regensburg. Could not believe uit when I saw them sitting in the display case. But I have no way of ascertaining their context - might be military, might be toys or cult objectrs or musical instzruments, for all I know.

THey're way too large for attaching, so PM me iof you want them. And remember, I am not saying these were used by centurions. But I love the visual.

[Luca]

I know other whistles from roman military archeological fields. But are not so common.
I also tried to use one of them from a private collection and after all these centuries it was still perfectly playing!

So the problem are: how they were used? From who? In which situations?
We don't know.

Who is saying that they were "for sure" used by centurions while in battle I think is wrong, first of all because they say "for sure": this is just an amazing theory.
Personally I think they were not used in battle. While engaged a man is too concentrated to hear something: as example think, if you know football (soccer) how many times the referee plays his whistle for an offside, but the player is too concentrated to hear and continues to go for the goal.
I think that whistles will be used during training or haunting or ... "playing" football? )