Probably built of wicker, the Celtic chariot actually was a much lighter, more agile vehicle than that represented on the Thames embankment. Diodorus Siculus writes of their use in Gaul.
"For their journeys and in battle they use two-horse chariots, the chariot carrying both charioteer and chieftain. When they meet with cavalry in the battle they cast their javelins at the enemy and then descending from the chariot join battle with their swords."
Although the war chariot had become obsolete by the time of the Gallic wars, Caesar did find them in Britain. When he reconnoitered the island, he writes that some four thousand watched his line of march. More than a hundred years later, chariots still were in use against Agricola.
Boudica's chariot would not have had scythes. But a passage from the Tain Bo Cuailnge, an epic cycle of Celtic stories written down in the eighth century AD that reflects Irish heroic society at the beginning of the first century AD, does show how powerful such imagery can be.
"When the spasm had run through the high hero Cuchulainn he stepped into his sickle war-chariot that bristled with points of iron and narrow blades, with hooks and hard prongs, and heroic frontal spikes,with ripping instruments and tearing nails on its shafts and straps and loops and cords. The body of the chariot was spare and slight and erect, fitted for the feats of a champion,with space for the lordly warrior's eight weapons, speedy as the wind or as a swallow or a deer darting over the level plain. The chariot was settled down on two fast steeds, wild and wicked, neat-headed and narrow bodied, with slender quarters and roan breast, firm in hoof and harness--a notable sight in the trim chariot-shafts. One horse was lithe and swift-leaping, high-arched and powerful, long-bodied and with great hooves. The other flowing-maned and shining, slight and slender in hoof and heel. In that style, then, he drove out to find his enemies."
