Iron Age The social and political power of Celtic women just got a boost

The social and political attitude of Celtic women in the Iron Age England has received a genetic elevator.

DNA data show that about 2,000 years ago, married women in a Celtic society, known as Durotrigians, stayed in their home communities on the coast of South-Central England while their partners came from outside the area, Say Paleogenetics Lara Cassidy of Trinity College Dublin and colleagues.

This wedding model in the center of women, called Matrilocality, in ancient and modern societies tends to accompany greater opportunities for women to have home and community power.

DNA derived from the skeletal remains of 57 people buried in the Iron Age cemetery near the Durotrigian countries showed signs of matrilocality, scientists report January 15 Nature. Mitochondrial DNA analyzes, commonly inherited by the mother, found that most individuals of both sexes had the mother’s background. But a sub -branch of individuals, mostly men, did not share genetic relationships. That is why investigators think that those men migrate to a society dominated by women.

Matrilocal practices characterized many British Celtic communities, scientists say. Further comparisons of mitochondrial DNA by people buried in 156 British and continental European archaeological sites that included about 6,000 years discovered the common antiquities of the mother in six other Iron Age countries. Most of those countries date back between 400 BC and 50 BC

Previous archaeological findings and historical accounts had suggested that Celtic women had considerable status. Greek and Roman writers described powerful political political leaders in the England Iron Age, including two Queen Celtic. The prestigious ornaments and other items located in the tombs of the Celtic Western European women imply the societies in which the property was inherited through the mother’s lines.

“That said, we were not expecting such a strong and widespread [genetic] Signing matrilocality throughout the Britain of the Iron Age, ”says Cassidy.

Celts consisted of a group of companies that spoke Indo-European languages ​​that spread throughout Europe between about 3,000 and 2,000 years ago.

Cassidy’s team revealed that the people of Celtic Iron Age in Southern England, including Durotrigians, show genetic signs of considerable mating with continental Europeans who must have passed the English canal. An infusion of European continental ancestry in England and Wales for the first time occurred before the Iron Age, from about 1000 BC to 875 BC, a 2021 study concluded. These population movements may have brought Celtic language to the islands British.

Social structures can vary in Today’s matrilocal societies, says Cassidy. Men sometimes prevail by official positions of the authority while women cooperate with local mothers and other allies to control family property, direct food production and make large shopping and sale decisions. Unlike the most common patrilocal systems in which a woman marries her husband’s family, matrilocal arrangements provide women with more access to education and divorce.

Ancient DNA findings in the new study confirm the existence of Celtic societies concentrated in women suggested over the last 20 years from archaeological discoveries in the Iron Age Britain and France, says archaeologist Rachel Pope of Liverpool. These excavations suggest that matrilocal societies distribute powers and resources in different ways from one part of Europe to another, she says. “There was no social structure of a size suitable for prehistoria.”

New DNA findings ask intriguing questions about how the Celtic crops of the Iron Age worked, says archaeologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For example, genetic studies in the countries of the Western European Iron Age have produced poor evidence of matrilocal practices, yet women’s graves on the continent contain more clumsy goods than those in British Durotrigian countries where Matrilocalcu reigned, Arnold says.

Another unexplained question relates to the ethnic and geographical origin of men who married Durotrigian women. The ways in which male newcomers integrated into their wives’ communities are unknown, says Arnold.