New analysis suggests that female family ties were central to social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion.
Genetic evidence from Late Iron Age cemeteries shows that while women were consanguineous, unrelated men tended to come into the community from elsewhere, perhaps after marriage.
Testing of ancient DNA recovered from 57 graves in Dorset, south-west England, showed that two-thirds of the individuals descended from a single maternal line. This cemetery was used from around 100 BC to around 200 AD.
Study co-author Lara Cassidy, a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin, said: “This was really surprising – it had never been observed before in European prehistory.”
The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggest that women are more likely to remain in the same circles throughout their lives, maintain social networks, and inherit or control land and property.
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On the other hand, “it’s your husband who comes in as a relative stranger, dependent on his wife’s family for land and livelihood,” Cassidy said.
This pattern, called matrilocality, is historically rare.
“Such matrilineal patterns have not been described in European prehistory, but a comparison of mitochondrial haplotype variation between European sites over 6,000 years shows that Iron Age cemeteries in Britain suggest the presence of a dominant matrilineage. “A significant reduction in diversity is noticeable,” the authors write. In an article accompanying the study.
Archaeologists studying cemeteries in Britain and Europe have found that in other ancient periods, from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, the pattern was reversed, with women leaving home to join their husbands’ family groups. Guido Gnecki-Ruscone told Max. Germany’s Planck Institute was not involved in the study.
In studies of preindustrial societies from about 1800 to the present, anthropologists found that men joined their wives’ extended family households only 8 percent of the time, Cassidy said.
But archaeologists already knew there was something special about women’s role in Iron Age Britain. A patchwork of tribes (also called Celts) with closely related languages and art styles lived in Britain before the Roman invasion of 43 AD. Precious objects were found buried with Celtic women, and Roman writers, including Julius Caesar, wrote with disdain: their relative independence and fighting ability;
The pattern of strong kinship among women the researchers found does not necessarily mean that women had formal positions of political power, known as matriarchy.
However, study co-author Myles Russell, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University, said the findings suggest that women had some control over land and property and strong social support, and that women in Britain He said that Celtic society was “more egalitarian than Roman society.”
“When the Romans arrived, they were surprised to see women in positions of power,” Russell said.
Some have questioned these accounts, with some suggesting that “the Romans may have exaggerated the freedom of English women to portray a barbarian society,” she told AFP.
“But archeology, and now genetics, suggests that women were influential in many areas of Iron Age life,” he says.
“Certainly, maternal ancestry may have been the main shaper of group identity.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
