Celtic women have influence in a “matrilineal society”

A fascinating vision of a female-dominated society has emerged from an ancient cemetery in the idyllic countryside of southwest England.

It was common for women to leave home to join their husband's family when they got married, but the Durothrigues, a Celtic tribe who lived in Dorset 2,000 years ago, found that women remained in their ancestral communities and men It was an unconventional system called the matriarchal system in which people immigrated to get married.

By analyzing the genomes of 57 Durotrigans buried between 100 BC and 100 AD, scientists discovered a typical maternal lineage. This was the first time this system was identified in European prehistory.

Meanwhile, research published Wednesday in Nature suggests that individuals with ancestry unrelated to the dominant lineage are mostly male, suggesting they migrated from other communities to live with their wives' families. It is said that there is.

“We did not expect such a strong signal of native origin,” said Lara Cassidy, assistant professor of genetics at Trinity College Dublin, who led the study. “When that came out in the data, it was a bit of a shock.”

“But if you think about it, if you look at what the classical writers said and the archaeological context, there are many hints that women were able to achieve high status in these societies,” she added. .

Celtic women's freedom has been a hot topic for thousands of years. Roman writers were scandalized for their coverage of sexual freedom, including taking multiple husbands. Cartimandua and Boudica, early British women leaders, demonstrated that women could command armies, lead tribes and reach the highest levels of power.

Archaeological evidence also suggests flexible gender power relations that vary widely depending on local traditions. For example, Celtic women were sometimes buried with luxurious grave goods such as jewelry and mirrors, which were signs of high status. Patriarchy, where women live close to their in-laws, is still much more common culturally, but female-centered societies are not as unheard of as they were a decade ago.

“This is a generational paradigm shift,” says Rachel Pope, associate professor of European prehistory at the University of Liverpool and an expert on matrilocality, who was not involved in the study. “This is part of a more general trend in archaeology, where we are turning back to data and physical evidence to guide our narratives, rather than pushy narratives that confirm our own biases. Ta.”

In other words, scientists are working on big data projects such as genome analysis to examine patterns in social structure with a level of precision not available from other sources, such as the writings of classical authors with their own agendas and biases. It is ascertaining that.

Iron Age people in Britain left behind few remains, but the cemetery at the center of this study is a rare exception. The ruins, which contain generations of Durotrigans, were discovered near the town of Winterbourne Kingston in 2008 and are still being excavated.

The bodies collected in the study were “kind of off the charts,” Dr. Cassidy said. “Obtaining a site like this with a large number of unburned burials in the same cemetery is a very rare opportunity. This allows us to study the composition of Iron Age communities in Britain, and to explore family relationships and social organization. It was a very unique opportunity to observe.”

The researchers' analysis revealed that dozens of individuals, including adult women, their daughters, adult granddaughters, and possibly great-grandchildren, are descendants of a single rare maternal line. Eight out of ten members of this non-matrilineal family were male, some of whom probably married into the community.

The research team also searched for maternal genetic markers across more than 150 archaeological sites spanning 6,000 years and found several populations with similar female lineage patterns. Comparative studies of ancient DNA may reveal the extent and distribution of Iron Age matrilineal societies. However, Dr Cassidy cautioned that matrilocality should not be equated with matriarchy, a system in which women are the primary power brokers.

Dr Cassidy said matriarchy “produces better outcomes and women's empowerment compared to patrilineage”. “However, we find that in matrilineal societies men still tend to dominate in formal positions of authority. They tend to be village chiefs, but daughters and sisters, who have soft power and great influence, , may not be elected without the help of their wives. They are not limited only to the domestic sphere.

Bettina Arnold, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said in an email that the study raises “some interesting questions” about the diversity of gender composition in Iron Age Europe.

“The fact that women appear to have more influence and autonomy in the Celtic-speaking regions of Europe has been hypothesized for some time, so these findings are not new in that sense.” said Dr. Arnold, who was not involved in the study. . “What's new is the fact that the men in our sample appear to have married and been buried with their wives' kin groups.” She hopes future research will uncover the origins of these men and determine how far they traveled. He suggested that it is necessary to clarify whether they traveled and came to this community.

Dr Pope called the study “groundbreaking” and said it confirmed what many archaeologists had long suspected about the fluid nature of Celtic life.

“Human societies differ fundamentally from region to region in Europe, even within one time slice from the Iron Age,” Dr. Pope said. “We're getting closer and closer to a scientific understanding of all these differences in burials, genetics, documentary evidence, etc. It's really, really cool.”