New analysis shows that female family ties were at the heart of social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion.
Genetic evidence from Late Iron Age cemeteries indicates that women were closely related, and unrelated men tended to come into the community from elsewhere, probably after marriage.
An examination of ancient DNA found in 57 graves in Dorset, south-west England, shows that two-thirds of people descended from the same maternal line. The cemetery has been used since about 100. BC to 200 AD
“It was really stunning – something like this had never been seen in European prehistory,” said study co-author Lara Cassidy, a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin.
The findings were released Wednesday in the journal Naturesuggest that women remained in the same circles throughout their lives – maintaining social networks and probably inheriting or managing land and property.
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Meanwhile, “it's your husband who comes in as a relative stranger, dependent on the wife's family for land and livelihood,” Cassidy said.
This pattern—so-called matrilocality—is historically rare.
“Such a matrilocal pattern has not been described in European prehistory, but when we compare mitochondrial haplotype variation among European archaeological sites spanning six millennia, British Iron Age cemeteries stand out as markedly reduced in diversity due to the presence of dominant matrilineal lines,” the authors write in an article accompanying the study.
Archaeologists studying graves in Britain and Europe had previously found only the opposite pattern — women leaving their homes to join their husbands' families — in other ancient time periods, from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, said Guido Nicci-Ruscone of Max. Planck Institute in Germany, which was not involved in the study.
In studies of pre-industrial societies from about 1800 to the present, anthropologists have found that men join their wives' families only 8 percent of the time, Cassidy said.
But archaeologists already knew there was something special about the role of women in Iron Age Britain. A number of tribes with closely related languages and artistic styles, sometimes called Celtic, lived in England before the Roman invasion in 43 AD. n. their relative independence and martial prowess.
The pattern of strong female kinship ties that the researchers found does not necessarily mean that women also held formal positions of political power, known as matriarchy.
But it does show that women had some control over land and property, as well as strong social support, making Britain's Celtic society “more egalitarian than the Roman world,” said study co-author and Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell.
“When the Romans arrived, they were surprised to see women in positions of power,” Russell said.
Some doubted the accounts, suggesting that “the Romans exaggerated the freedoms of British women to paint a picture of an unbridled society,” he told AFP.
“But archaeology, and now genetics, suggest that women had an impact on many areas of Iron Age life,” he said.
“Indeed, it is quite possible that maternal descent was a major factor in the formation of group identity.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.