Ancient DNA from graves reveals ‘exciting’ find about Iron Age women in Britain, scientists say

Female family ties were at the heart of social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion, a new analysis suggests.

Genetic evidence from a Late Iron Age cemetery suggests that women were closely related, while unrelated men probably tended to come into the community from elsewhere after marriage.

A study of ancient DNA from 57 graves in Dorset, southwest England, shows that two-thirds of individuals are descended from a single mother. The cemetery was used from about 100 BC to 200 AD

“It was a truly jaw-dropping event – it has never been seen before in European history,” said study co-author Lara Cassidy, a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin.

The findings were published Wednesday In the journal Naturesuggests that women remain in the same circles throughout life – maintaining social networks, possibly inheriting or managing land and property.

Meanwhile, “it’s your husband who comes in as a relative stranger who depends on the wife’s family for land and livelihood,” Cassidy said.

This model – called matrilocality – is historically rare.

“Such a matrilocal pattern has not been described in European prehistory, but when comparing mitochondrial haplotype variation across European archaeological sites spanning six millennia, British Iron Age cemeteries show a marked reduction in diversity resulting from the presence of dominant matrilines.” the authors write in an article accompanying the study.

Archaeologists studying burial sites in Britain and Europe had previously only discovered women leaving their homes to join their husband’s family group in other ancient periods, from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, said Guido Gnecchi-Ruscone at Max. The Planck Institute in Germany was not part of the study.

In studies of pre-industrial societies from about 1800 to the present day, Cassidy found that only 8% of men’s wives joined extended family households.

But archaeologists already knew that there was something special about the role of women in Iron Age Britain. Patches of tribes with related languages ​​and art styles who lived in England before the Roman invasion in AD 43 lived in AD 43. their relative independence and fighting prowess.

The pattern of strong female kinship that the researchers found does not imply that women also hold formal positions of political power, called matriarchy.

This shows that women had some control over land and property, as well as strong social support, which made Celtic society in Britain “more egalitarian than the Roman world,” says study co-author Miles Russell, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University.

“When the Romans arrived, they were shocked to see women in power,” Russell said.

Some doubted these accounts, suggesting that “the Romans exaggerated the freedoms of British women to paint a picture of an untamed society”.

“But archaeology, and now genetics, shows that women were influential in many aspects of Iron Age life,” she said.

“Indeed, maternal ancestry may have been the primary shaper of group identities.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.