Scientists say ancient DNA exhumed from graves reveals a “startling” discovery about Iron Age women in the UK

New analysis suggests that female family ties were at the heart of social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman conquest.

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, most likely after marriage.

An examination of ancient DNA extracted from 57 graves in Dorset, southwest England, showed that two-thirds of individuals descend from a single maternal line. The cemetery was used from about 100 BC to 200 AD

“This was really amazing, and had never been observed before in European prehistory,” said study co-author Lara Cassidy, a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin.

The results were published on Wednesday In the journal Naturesuggests that women remained in the same circles throughout life – maintaining social networks and potentially inheriting or managing land and property.

Meanwhile, Cassidy said, “It’s your husband who comes in as a relative outsider, and is dependent on the wife’s family for land and livelihood.”

This pattern – called matriarchy – is historically rare.

“Such a matrilineal pattern has not been described in European prehistory, but when we compare mitochondrial haplotype variation between European archaeological sites spanning 6,000 years, British Iron Age graves stand out as having experienced a marked decline in diversity due to the presence of dominant matrilineages. ” The authors write In the article accompanying the study.

Archaeologists studying grave sites in Britain and Europe had previously discovered only the opposite pattern – women leaving their homes to join their husband’s family group – in other ancient time periods, from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, said Guido Genici Rusconi of Maxx University. The Planck Institute in Germany, which 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 families 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 group of tribes with closely related languages ​​and artistic styles – sometimes referred to as the Celtic – lived in England before the Roman invasion in 43 AD. Valuable objects have been found buried with Celtic women, and Roman writers, including Julius Caesar, wrote, With disdain for their relative independence and martial prowess.

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

But this suggests that women had some control over land and property, as well as strong social support, making Celtic society in Britain “more egalitarian than in the Roman world,” said study co-author and Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell.

“When the Romans arrived, they were astonished to find women in positions of power,” Russell said.

Some have questioned these accounts, suggesting that “the Romans exaggerated the freedoms of British women to paint a picture of an unruly society,” he told AFP.

“But archaeology, and now genetics, indicate that women had an influence in many areas of life in the Iron Age,” he added.

“In fact, it is possible that maternal origin is the primary shaper of group identities.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to the preparation of this report.