That was inferred due to DNA sequenced from members of a single community, over 50 ancient genomes from a set of burial grounds in Dorset, that were in use before and after the Romans tried to do in AD 43 what they did to Israel a few decades later. They reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman from centuries before while relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.
This young woman from Langton Herring was buried with a mirror (right panels) and jewelry, including a Roman coin amulet showing a female charioteer representing Victory. Credit: Bournemouth University.
That means husbands moved to join their wives’ communities upon marriage and land was likely passed down through the female line, the first incidence of this type of system in European prehistory. This was not a fringe community, “matrilocality” has also been found in data from other genetic surveys of Iron Age Britain and showed saw the same pattern. In Yorkshire, for example, one dominant matriline had been established before 400 BC.
This was possible thanks to the unique burial customs of the the “Durotriges”, as the Romans called them. It means Dorset has well-preserved burials compared to most of Britain. The Romans documented it as well. They wrote of women occupying positions of power and two of the earliest rulers they list, Boudica and Cartimandua, were queens who commanded armies.
Some of that was assumed to be Roman propaganda against difficult locals, as they did in Judea, because having female rules suggested they were barbarians and needed civilized rulers. Archeology and now genetics suggest it wasn’t just storytelling to rationalize occupation.
“We also see these folk had deep knowledge of their own ancestry – multiple marriages between distant branches of this family occurred and were possibly favoured, but close inbreeding was avoided,” said anthropologist Dr. Martin Smith, Ph.D.
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