2,000 years ago, the Celtic societies that lived in what is now southern Britain were matrilocal and matrilineal, that is, women were the ones who controlled the genealogical line, unlike other peoples further south and the Roman Empire, whose expansion ended these models. Although the archaeological data already pointed in this direction, the team Lara Cassidyfrom Trinity College Dublin, has just provided genetic evidence that confirms this.
According to the work published this Wednesday in the magazine Naturethe analysis of the genomes of 57 individuals buried in Iron Age cemeteries associated with Durotrigian communities near the British town of Dorset, reveals that in these Celtic societies married women remained in their ancestral communities and it was the men who moved.
“This tells us that husbands moved to join their wives’ communities when they married, and that land could be passed down through the female line,” explains Cassidy. “It is the first time that this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and predicts the social and political empowerment of women. “It is relatively rare in modern societies, but it may not always have been this way.”
Primacy of the maternal line
The structure of human societies is determined by where married couples tend to reside; patrilocality is one in which the members of the couple reside predominantly with or near the man’s family, while in matrilocal societies, couples live near the woman’s parents.
It is the first time that this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and predicts the social and political empowerment of women.
Lara Cassidy
— Researcher at Trinity College Dublin and lead author of the article
Evidence of patrilocal societies is found in European sites from the Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age. However, archaeological evidence suggests that Celtic societies granted women high status. The Durotriges tribe, for example, who occupied this area of the south central coast of England around 100 BC. C. to 100 AD. C., buried women with valuable objects.
The fact that most of the individuals whose DNA has been analyzed were related through the maternal line and that the unrelated individuals found in the cemetery were predominantly male leads Cassidy and his team to conclude that the genetic data supports this theory. . “This was the cemetery of a large family group,” says the main author. “We reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and discovered that most members traced their maternal lineage to a single woman, who would have lived centuries earlier. On the contrary, relationships through the paternal line were almost non-existent.”
A widespread phenomenon
The authors also discovered that matrilineality was not limited to Dorset. After analyzing data from previous genetic studies of Iron Age Britain, and although the number of samples from other cemeteries was smaller, they observed that the same pattern emerged again and again. To make sure, they also compared ancient DNA from Britain with other European sites (such as France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic) that span more than 6,000 years and offer information on population movements, identifying connections between British Iron Age populations. and the populations of continental Europe.
“Across Britain we have seen cemeteries in which the majority of individuals were maternally descended from a small group of female ancestors,” he explains. Dan Bradleyprofessor of Population Genetics at Trinity and co-author of the study. “In Yorkshire, for example, a dominant maternal line had been established before 400 BC. To our surprise, this was a widespread phenomenon with deep roots on the island.”
Throughout Britain we have seen cemeteries in which the majority of individuals were maternally descended from a small group of female ancestors.
Dan Bradley
— Professor of Population Genetics at Trinity and co-author of the study
“Beyond archaeology, knowledge of Iron Age Britain comes mainly from Greek and Roman writers, but they are not always considered the most reliable,” he explains. Miles Russelldirector of the excavation and co-author of the study. “When the Romans arrived, they were surprised to find women in positions of power. Two of the first recorded rulers were queens, Boudica and Cartimandua, who commanded armies.”
When the Romans arrived, they were surprised to find women in positions of power.
Miles Russell
— Director of the excavation and co-author of the study
“It has been suggested that the Romans exaggerated the freedoms of British women to paint a portrait of an untamed society,” adds Russell. “But archaeology, and now genetics, imply that women were influential in many spheres of Iron Age life. In fact, it is possible that maternal ancestry was the primary factor shaping group identities.”
Matrilineal does not equal matriarchal
Marga Sánchez Romeroprofessor at the University of Granada (UGR) and author of the book prehistory of women (Destino, 2022), believes that this is a great discovery and highlights that genetic findings are contributing to overturning old prejudices about the role of women throughout history. But remember that matrilineality does not automatically equate to women having power, as one might mistakenly infer.
It is likely that this placed women in a situation of somewhat more power, and it certainly shows that the relationships were different from what we had assumed.
Marga Sánchez Romero
— Professor at the University of Granada (UGR) and author of the book Prehistory of Women
“It is likely that this placed women in a situation of somewhat more power, and it certainly shows that the relationships were different from what we had assumed,” she explains to elDiario.es. “But women began to lose power in the Neolithic and matrilineal does not equal matriarchal. In fact, in the Mediterranean we are very matrilineal, that is, the mother is like the epicenter of the family, but we are not matriarchal at all, although some people understand it that way.
For the specialist, the power that women may have had in certain aspects involved being the guarantors of the family line and that gave them certain amounts of control, although in the archaeological record this is very difficult to determine. Similar evidence has been found in other sites, such as those found in the Panoría necropolis, in the north of Granada. “Here we have discovered exactly the same thing, a group of a population in which, for 1,500 years, those who move and those who leave the town are men. Why do we know it? Because in the graves we have twice as many women as men and if we take that ratio to the youth population we have 10 times more women than men.”
Although matrilocality cannot be directly or necessarily associated with a non-patriarchal society, it is interesting to discover that it was perhaps prevalent at certain times
Maria Cruz Berrocal
— Archaeologist of the IIIPC and senior scientist of the CSIC
The Spanish archaeologist Maria Cruz Berrocalresearcher of IIIPC and senior scientist at the CSIC, believes that the study is very interesting and shows that when genetics is used to draw connections between individuals it can serve to strengthen hypotheses or create new ones. “Although matrilocality cannot be directly or necessarily associated with a non-patriarchal society, it is interesting to discover that it was perhaps prevalent at certain times, and much more so, that there seem to be historical transitions from patrilocality to matrilocality,” he points out.
“In the end, history is probably much more multilinear than we believe, and that is interesting in itself,” concludes Cruz Berrocal. “Perhaps we have an overrepresentation of patriarchy in the ethnographic record because those ethnographed societies are a historical result, largely of colonialism.”
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