Female family ties were central to social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion, according to a new study.
Genetic evidence from a late Iron Age cemetery shows that women were closely related while unrelated men tended to come into the community from elsewhere, possibly after marriage.
A study of ancient DNA recovered from 57 graves in Dorset in south-west England shows that two-thirds of the individuals were descended from a single mother. The cemetery was used from about 100 BC to 200 AD
“That was very difficult – it was never seen in European prehistory,” said study co-author Lara Cassidy, a geneticist at Trinity College, Dublin.
The results, published on Wednesday in the journal Naturesuggesting that women remained in the same circles throughout their lives – maintaining social networks and likely owning or managing land and property.
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At the same time “it's your husband who comes in as a relative stranger, dependent on the wife's family for landand livelihood,” said Cassidy.
This pattern – known as 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 over six thousand years, Iron Age burials Britain stands out as a major reduction in diversity driven by the presence of dominant matrilines,” the authors write in an article accompanying the study.
Archaeologists studying grave sites in Britain and Europe have found only the opposite pattern – women leaving their homes to join their husband's family group – in other ancient times. , from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, said Guido Gnecchi-Ruscone at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who was not part of the study.
In studies of pre-industrial societies from about 1800 to the present, anthropologists have found that men join their wives' extended family households only 8% of the time, Cassidy said.
But archaeologists already knew there was something special about the role of women in Iron Age Britain. A mosaic of tribes with closely related languages and art styles – sometimes called Celtic – lived in England before the Roman invasion in 43 AD Valuable objects were found buried with Celtic women, and writers wrote Roman, including Julius Caesar, with contempt for him. their relative independence and ability to fight.
The pattern of strong female relationship ties that the researchers found does not necessarily mean that women also had formal positions with 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 Celtic British society “more egalitarian than the Roman world,” said the study's co-author and archaeologist Bournemouth University, Miles Russell.
“When the Romans arrived, they were surprised to find women in positions of power,” Russell said.
Some have doubted these accounts, suggesting that “the Romans were exaggerating the freedoms of British women to paint a picture of an anonymous society,” he told AFP.
“But archaeology, and now genetics, means that women were influential in many areas of Iron Age life,” he said.
“In fact, it is possible that maternal ancestry is the primary shaper of group identity.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
