An in-depth genetic analysis of 2,000-year-old genomes has revealed that women were at the center of social networks in British Celtic communities during the Iron Age. Women were potentially very socially and politically empowered and shaped what their society looked like. The findings are detailed in a study published January 15 in the journal Nature.
Patrilocality vs. matrilocality
In anthropology and archeology, the structure of human societies can be determined by where married couples tend to reside. Patrilocality is when partners will predominantly live near or with members of the male’s family. Matrilocality sees the opposite, with couples living near the female’s parents.
Patrilocality is the most common system scientists have observed in European Neolithic, Copper, and Bronze Age sites. However, archaeological evidence suggests that Celtic societies may have also given women high status, such as the Durotriges tribe. This group lived along the central southern English coast around 100 BCE to 100 CE and buried women with valuable items.
Digging into ‘Duropolis’
The genetic data in this new study supports the theory that some Celtic women were of a higher status. More than 50 ancient genomes from several members of a single community were retrieved from a Durotrigan burial site. Nicknamed “Duropolis,” archaeologists from Bournemouth University have been excavating the area in present day Dorset, England since 2009. The burial grounds were used before and after the Roman Conquest of Britain in 43 CE.
“This was the cemetery of a large kin group,” Lara Cassidy, a study co-author and geneticist at Trinity College in Dublin, said in a statement. “We reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman, who would have lived centuries before. In contrast, relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.”
This absence indicates that husbands moved to join their wives’ communities upon marriage. Land was also potentially passed down along the female line and not the male line.
“This is the first time this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and it predicts female social and political empowerment,” said Cassidy. “It’s relatively rare in modern societies, but this might not always have been the case.”
The team also found that this matrilocal social organization was not only restricted to the Dorset area. Data from earlier,smaller genetic surveys of Iron Age Britain also have a similar pattern.
“Across Britain we saw cemeteries where most individuals were maternally descended from a small set of female ancestors,” study co-author and Trinity College geneticist Dan Bradley said in a statement. “In Yorkshire, for example, one dominant matriline had been established before 400 BC. To our surprise, this was a widespread phenomenon with deep roots on the island.”
An untamed society?
Beyond archeological evidence, a great deal of what we know about Iron Age Britain largely comes from Roman and Greek writers and not from conquered British or Celtic sources.
“Their commentary on British women is remarkable in light of these findings. When the Romans arrived, they were astonished to find women occupying positions of power,” Miles Russell, a study co-author and archeologist from Bournemouth University in England, said in a statement. “Two of the earliest recorded rulers were queens–Boudica and Cartimandua–who commanded armies.
[ Related: Construction crew discovers Roman stone coffin under British road. ]
Some scholars have suggested that the Romans exaggerated the liberties of women on the British Isles to imply that this was a more uncivilized society. However, this genetic and skeletal evidence implies that women were likely influential and could have been shaping group identity through matrilineal lines.
“These results give us a whole new way of looking at the burials we are uncovering with our students,” study co-author and Bournemouth University anthropologist Martin Smith said in a statement. “Rather than simply seeing a set of skeletons, hidden aspects of these people’s lives and identities come into view as mothers, husbands, daughters and so on. We also see these folk had deep knowledge of their own ancestry–multiple marriages between distant branches of this family occurred and were possibly favoured, but close inbreeding was avoided.”
