Genetic evidence from a late Iron Age cemetery in southern Britain shows that women were closely related while unrelated men tended to come into the community from elsewhere, likely after marriage.

Ancient DNA reveals that during the Iron Age, women in ancient Celtic societies were at the center of their social networks — unlike previous eras of prehistory.

Some scholars have suggested that the Romans exaggerated the liberties of women on the British Isles to imply that this was a more uncivilized society. However, this genetic and skeletal evidence implies that women were likely influential and could have been shaping group identity through matrilineal lines.

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.

DNA analysis suggests Iron Age societies in Britain were built around women rather than men.

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.

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,