Land and wealth in Celtic Britain centred on women – DNA analysis
“We find quite elaborately furnished graves with high status objects of wealth. Every time we find that, it occurs in women’s graves, so we think wealth was being transferred down the female line,” says Prof Martin Smith at Bournemouth university.
The findings also back up Roman writings at the time which suggested that women in Britain were quite powerful, more so than in Rome.
But Romans like Julius Caeser viewed that as a sign of backwardness.
“Women in Britain had power and it was a more egalitarian place. That was the biggest problem that Romans had with the Britons because Rome was a deeply patriarchal society. To them, it marked Britons as the ultimate Barbarians,” says Professor Miles Russell at Bournemouth University.
The majority of societies today are patrilocal, meaning women move to their husband’s communities.
But some matrilocal communities exist today or in the recent past, including the Akans in Ghana, West Africa and Cherokee in North America.
The scientists say that Iron Age Britain may have been matrilocal because men were frequently away fighting.
Dr Cassidy compares it to World War Two when women gained more political and economic power.
Matrilocal societies are also less likely to experience internal conflict, she says.
“It can promote feelings of unity among neighbouring communities and villages. It disperses groups of related males, stopping groups of related males developing strong loyalties and starting feuds with the related males nearby,” she suggests.
The findings are published in the scientific journal Nature.
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