New Genetic Findings Show Women’s Empowerment in Ancient Britain Before Roman Rule

Genetic analysis of people buried in a 2,000-year-old cemetery in southern England supports the idea that Britain’s Celtic communities were dominated by women, finding that while men immigrated from other communities, women indicates that they stayed in their ancestral home. It lasted for centuries.

The study supports growing archaeological evidence that women held high positions in Celtic societies across Europe, including Britain, and that Mediterranean audiences often found it difficult to describe Celtic women as having power. This gives credence to the Roman accounts, which were often thought to be exaggerated.

Since 2009, Durotrygean skeletons have been unearthed during excavations of an Iron Age burial site in Winterbourne-Kingston, Dorset, England. The Durothrigeans occupied the coast of south-central England from about 100 BC to 100 AD, and probably spoke a Celtic language.

Human bones from Iron Age Britain are rare because they were destroyed by common funerary practices such as cremation and burial of bodies in bogs. However, the Durotrige buried their dead in formal cemeteries in the chalk landscape, which helped preserve them. Archaeologists have found that Durotrigan women were often buried with valuables, suggesting a high status and perhaps a female-centered society.

Lara Cassidy Doctors from Trinity College, Dublin, have now analyzed the genomes of 55 Winterbourne-Kingston Durotrigans to determine how they are related to each other and to other Iron Age peoples in Britain and Europe. I found out how they are related.

Cassidy says there were two big “aha” moments. Both were associated with mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is a small loop of DNA that is inherited only through the maternal line because it is passed through the egg cell and is not integrated with other DNA.

Once each individual’s mitochondrial DNA results were obtained, the researchers noticed that the same genetic sequences appeared over and over again. More than two-thirds of the individuals were found to be descended from a single maternal line, descended from a common female ancestor several centuries ago.

“At that moment, my jaw dropped,” Cassidy says. “This was a clear sign of matrilocality, a husband moving to live with his wife’s family, a pattern never before seen in prehistoric Europe.” Father locality moving into the community is the norm.

To find out whether the maternal localization pattern was a phenomenon peculiar to the Durothrigues, or whether it might have been more widespread across Britain, Cassidy uses an earlier large-scale study of Iron Age Britain and Europe. I started looking into genetic research data. Her jaw dropped again. She found that in cemeteries across Britain, most people were maternal descendants of a small number of female ancestors.

Cassidy said there is growing evidence that Iron Age women were relatively powerful. “Nativeness typically co-occurs with cultural practices that benefit women and integrate them into family support networks,” she explains.

In modern societies, matrilocality is associated with increased female involvement in food production, increased paternity uncertainty, and longer periods of male absence. In such societies, it is men who migrate to new communities as relative strangers and become dependent on their partners’ families for their livelihood.

“Although men typically still occupy formal positions of authority, women can wield significant influence through their strong matrilineal kinship networks and central role in local economies,” says Cassidy.

Cassidy’s team also compared the British DNA dataset with data from other European sites, revealing repeated waves of migration from the continent, consistent with archaeological evidence. This is because southern Britain was a hotspot of cultural and genetic exchange during the Bronze Age between 2500 BC and 1200 BC and during the Late Iron Age influx of the previously unknown Durothrigid period. showed that it was.

Previous research had suggested that Celtic languages probably arrived in Britain between 1000 BC and 875 BC, but this new discovery expands that possibility. “Celtic languages may have been introduced multiple times,” Cassidy said.

“This is very exciting new research and will revolutionize the way we understand prehistoric societies,” he says. Rachel Pope from the University of Liverpool, UK, previously found evidence of female-dominated kinship relationships in Iron Age Europe. “What we’re learning is that the nature of pre-Roman European society was actually very different.”