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Ancient genomes reveal an Iron Age society centered on women

Accepted submission by taylorvich at 2025-01-15 16:51:54
Science

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ancient-genomes-reveal-iron-age.html [phys.org]

An international team of geneticists, led by those from Trinity College Dublin, has joined forces with archaeologists from Bournemouth University to decipher the structure of British Iron Age society, finding evidence of female political and social empowerment.

The researchers seized upon a rare opportunity to sequence DNA from many members of a single community. They retrieved over 50 ancient genomes from a set of burial grounds in Dorset, southern England, in use before and after the Roman Conquest of AD 43. The results revealed that this community was centered around bonds of female-line descent.

Dr. Lara Cassidy, Assistant Professor in Trinity's Department of Genetics, led the study that has been published in Nature.

She said, "This was the cemetery of a large kin group. We reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman, who would have lived centuries before. In contrast, relationships through the father's line were almost absent.

"This tells us that husbands moved to join their wives' communities upon marriage, with land potentially passed down through the female line. This is the first time this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and it predicts female social and political empowerment.

"It's relatively rare in modern societies, but this might not always have been the case."

Incredibly, the team found that this type of social organization, termed "matrilocality," was not just restricted to Dorset. They sifted through data from prior genetic surveys of Iron Age Britain and, although sample numbers from other cemeteries were smaller, they saw the same pattern emerge again and again.


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