When the Romans first entered the British Isles, they found a land ruled by warrior queens and other high-status women – or at least, that’s how Julius Caesar and other witnesses described the situation in this new and strange territory.

Researchers have uncovered genetic evidence suggesting that ancient Celtic societies in Iron Age Britain were matrilineal and matrilocal, with women holding status and influence.

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,

Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that an Iron Age community in Dorset, England, was centered around bonds of female-line descent.

Scientists analyzing 2,000-year-old DNA have revealed that a Celtic society in the southern U.K. during the Iron Age was centered around women, a study said.

Julius Caesar, in his account of the Gallic Wars written more than more than century earlier, also described Celtic women participating in public affairs, exercising political influence — and having more than one husband.

The site belonged to a group the Romans named the “Durotriges,” researchers said, and this ethnic group had other settlements, including a site near Dorset nicknamed “Duropolis” by the archaeologists who work there.

DNA analysis indicates that a Celtic tribe in Iron Age Britain was matrilocal, meaning men relocated to live with women’s families.

New genetic evidence suggests that female family ties were central to social structures in pre-Roman Britain, offering a fresh perspective on Celtic society and its gender dynamics.

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DNA evidence from 2,000 years ago shows that women in Celtic society typically remained in their ancestral communities after marriage, while men were more likely to move away. View on euronews

Female family ties were at the heart of social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion, a new analysis suggests. Genetic evidence from a late Iron Age cemetery shows that women were closely related while unrelated men tended to come into the community from elsewhere,