Ancient Celtic tribe had women in its social center: NPR

For millennia, couples have had to decide where to live.

“For the vast majority of human history,” says Lara Cassidygeneticist at Trinity College Dublin, “Societies were centered on kinship, so you decide which family you’re going to live with.”

In Britain, during the Neolithic period (characterized by the introduction of agriculture) and the Bronze Age, which spanned from around 4,000 to 800 BCE, prehistoric human societies had tend to be patrilocal. It’s “where women thrive,” Cassidy explains. “They leave their home as soon as they get married and go to join the village, the community of their husbands.”

This is why Cassidy and his colleagues were surprised to find the remains of a Celtic tribe who lived during the Iron Age in Britain between around 100 BCE and 100 CE where it appeared, after studying their DNA, that women were at the center of their social network. . The research is published in Nature.

“It’s a really rare model.” Cassidy said. “It is unheard of before in European prehistory that so many people are all related through a female lineage. This adds to this pile of evidence that women were capable of exerting great social and political influence in these companies.”

A common challenge for women

Patrilocality tends to be a more difficult arrangement for women. “It separates them from their family,” Cassidy says. “You’ve lost the support network of your childhood. You arrive as a relative outsider.”

Researchers know that women joined their husbands’ communities by examining ancient DNA from groups buried together dating back to the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age.

“When most men share exactly the same Y chromosome,” Cassidy explains, “which is passed down from father to son, that means they are all descended from a recent male ancestor through the male line.”

After the Bronze Age, comes the Iron Age. In Britain this began around 800 BCE and is a period when relatively little is known about how societies were structured, although there is some evidence to suggest that at least some British women had some influence.

“Sometimes there is a knee-jerk reaction, whenever you hear of a female leader or find a very rich funeral, to assume that this is an exception or that she must simply have been the wife of someone important rather than being important in and of itself,” Cassidy explains. .

A special burial place

Cassidy was eager to collaborate on the study of the Iron Age burial site remains of a Celtic tribe called the Durotriges, dating from around 100 BCE to 100 CE, in what is today the south of England. “Cemeteries with unburned graves are quite unusual,” she says. “Berial customs in Iron Age Britain appear to have been quite diverse, but there is a lot of cremation and scattering of remains across the landscape. So it was a unique opportunity to be able to sample many members of ‘the same community.’

Cassidy and his team sequenced the ancient DNA of more than 50 individuals from the dense bone that surrounded their inner ears.

“When we finished the first big batch of samples, we immediately saw on the screen that there was something special about this site,” she recalls.

Males in this community did not share a Y chromosome. Instead, individuals shared mitochondrial DNA, which is passed to children from their mothers.

“And that’s when I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Cassidy says. “It’s a community where a lot of people are related through the female line. It’s matrilocality and it’s rare. I didn’t expect that.”

Matrilocality is the opposite of patrilocality: men have left their families to live with their wives. The women remained in their communities.

“So it’s not just mothers and wives,” Cassidy says. “They’re also daughters, sisters and cousins. They’re part of a much larger network of relatives and people they’ve known since birth. So they have a much bigger support system.”

It was not a matriarchy in which women necessarily dominated positions of authority, but Cassidy argues that they had status and influence over family finances, decisions, and property.

She and her colleagues discovered the same thing when they inspected hundreds of Iron Age genomes from British cemeteries. “The majority of people buried there were descendants of a small number of women,” Cassidy says. “That’s when we say, ‘It’s very common on the island. It’s probably a custom that goes back centuries.’ “

“The results are fascinating because they show a very, very different scenario compared to other regions in Europe,” says Marta Cintas Peñaprehistoric archaeologist from the University of Seville who did not contribute to the research. She warns, however, that the data recorded for this period is rare. “I wouldn’t say that before it was patrilocality everywhere and then there was a change,” she says. “I think we need more data to confirm or refute this.”

Of language and war

“I was impressed by the article,” says Carole Embercultural anthropologist and chair of the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, who was also not involved in the study. “But I’m not surprised that there have been matrilocal societies in the past.”

“Indeed, even if matrilocality is not common, it represents around 15% of anthropological archives”, particularly in Central Africa and within certain Amerindian communities, she explains.

Ember says there’s something else interesting about matrilocal societies. They often speak a different language than their neighbors (in this case, Celtic) – evidence that they probably migrated from elsewhere. “If you succeed in entering someone else’s territory,” she said, “that means you will have to succeed in a war.”

It turns out that matrilocal societies tend to be successful in fighting external wars. Ember, Cassidy, and others suggest that this is likely due to a lack of infighting and broader tribal unity. “It’s not definitive but it’s a good theory,” Cassidy says.

Still, much remains unknown about this Celtic tribe, as well as the many groups of prehistoric humans scattered across space and time, but Cassidy is confident that ancient DNA will help unravel some of this mystery.

“I think there are going to be a lot of other surprises,” she says, “and we need to keep an open mind as we start to delve into it.”