For many years, history suggested that in most ancient societies, women moved into their husband's families after marriage. However, new research has flipped this idea on its head. In some ancient British Celtic communities, it turns out that it was actually the men who joined their wives' families! This unusual practice is known as matrilocality, and it was a common tradition among some Iron Age groups in Britain.
What did the new research find?
Exciting new information has been found by researchers from Trinity College Dublin as they dug into the DNA of people buried in ancient cemeteries. They discovered that in certain communities, especially the Durotriges tribe, men moved into the homes of their wives' families instead of the other way around. This is a huge discovery because the belief for so long was that most societies in the past followed patrilocality, which is a tradition where women join their husband's families.
According to Dr. Lara Cassidy, lead researcher on the project, these findings shake up our understanding of ancient societies. She said that one must recognize that matrilocality could have been more common in certain periods of history. "Potentially, there are periods in time where matrilocality is much more common and that has really important knock-on effects for how we view women in the past and their roles and their influences in society," she said.
How did this practice affect women’s roles?
An interesting point by Dr. Cassidy was that most people look at history and think women were primarily shifted to the domestic sphere. This research reveals it wasn't always so, particularly in Celtic societies during the Iron Age.
“In a lot of societies today and in the past, women wield huge influence and huge power, and it’s good to remember that,” she added. This could mean that women had more control over social and economic matters than we may have previously believed.
The researchers didn’t just study any group of people—they focused on individuals from rare Iron Age burials in Britain. The site they examined is of major importance because it's one of the few places where Iron Age people were buried with valuable items.
In fact, women in these cemeteries were often buried with such treasures, that suggets they might have had higher social status than previously thought.
Dr. Cassidy said this could be pointing to a more equal society where men and women were not seen as having very different social ranks.
"That is suggesting not much of a status difference between men and women, or even perhaps higher-status burials for women," she said.
These findings show that women could have played a much more powerful and influential role in their communities than history has typically shown.
This discovery opens up new ways of thinking about the past. It challenges the idea that men always held more power than women and helps us appreciate the complexity of ancient societies. It also encourages us to re-examine how we view women in history and recognize that their influence may have been much greater than we once thought.