BBC article: "Women held keys to land and wealth in Celtic Britain"

[yetanotherusernameAgain]

This is a very interesting article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20g7j707g8o

The article is about research following an archaeological excavation in Dorset of 57 skeletons of people living around 100 BC to AD 100. Some extracts from the article:

"Skeletons unearthed in Dorset contained DNA evidence that Celtic men moved to live with their wives' families and communities."

"Scientists found evidence of a whole community built around the female line of a family over generations, probably originating with one woman."

"The work indicates that this society was what is known as matrilocal - meaning that a married man moved to live in his wife's community."

" "The most sort of obvious benefit to a woman is that if you don't leave home, you don't leave your support network. Your parents, siblings, family members are all still around you," says Dr Cassidy."

"Matrilocal societies are also less likely to experience internal conflict, she says."

" "It can promote feelings of unity among neighbouring communities and villages. It disperses groups of related males, stopping groups of related males developing strong loyalties and starting feuds with the related males nearby," she suggests."

Whilst I appreciate it has been traditionally understood that women went to live with their male partners family after marriage this isn’t the case these days.
Its more usual now for couples to graduate to the woman's family

So it seems things have come full circle perhaps.

Thank you for posting this interesting article on Celtic society OP.

Are we sure it wasn't that the man moved in to become the protector? Taking over from his wife's aging father as the patriarch of the family.

I suppose it's hard to be absolutely sure about it, but there is plenty of evidence that women in Celtic society could wield power and achieve high status, which backs up the matrilocal theory.
And on that basis, there's a good possibility that some bloke moving in and claiming to be the new 'patriarch' would quickly be put in his place by the matriarch and her family😂

Maybe. But in that era somebody still needed to be able to pick up an axe and defend their village.

Women were spiritual leaders and sometimes were Druids.

There have been women warriors in the past.

Something definitely seemed to happen around the year 0 BC mark, to push women’s status down. It’s easy to blame Rome in Europe, followed by the growth of Islam pushed by Arabs and then Turks, but a similar thing seemed to happen in Japan at the same time. It’s difficult to prove, and we all know how the patriarchy likes to dismiss and undermine the study of women’s history particularly.

The spread of modern economics, separated from land use, in the early modern state pushed down women’s status again, as did the Industrial Revolution. Funny how economic change always seems to impact women, badly.

Facinating @MarieDeGournay and @WaryCrow . Learning how these roles changed over history makes our current freedoms and agency seem quite fragile.

This reminds me of the Bonobos - which although not a true matriarchy, does let men go off and fight while the women look after each other and the kids https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=406710085303292.

It seems that the male bonobos get more frequently violent with each other, however, when left to their own devices (no big surprise) but not as lethally as chimps in the more patriarchal.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/04/so-much-for-summers-of-love/

Philippa Gregory’s ‘Normal Women’ is a fascinating read, although a little breathless. Actually women of north Europe are used to having more freedom than they had immediately after the Second World War, when they were deliberately pushed back. An acknowledged lower status perhaps, but I was surprised how accepted they were in every trade in the past.

Thanks Wary, off to order that now!

You can have a free audiobook of it on Spotify - I also downloaded it after reading about it here. Loving it so far! Particularly how the Normans bought patriarchy to Britain. Prior to that, in Anglo Saxon times, we used to allow female land owners, women could write their own wills and we bartered for goods. After 1066 we had 5 centuries of men taking over and introducing coins...we all know how that ends.

I'm scottish so im interested in the parallel developments in Scotland, although Im sure there was influence from the Norman and Anglo Saxons.

1066 was undoubtedly hugely significant, but in the context of bartered goods - and things like use of commons - the beginnings of the early modern state had a lot to do with it too. The upheavals of the dissolution of monasteries - and nunneries - and enclosure and the shift to written ownership over communal all were allowed to simply write women out. And written out we have remained ever since: it has been the custom among men to write us out ever since, and then blame us for that too.

@WaryCrow that makes a lot of sense. The Poor Hard No Lawyers is a fantastic book about how Scotland's land ownership has ended up the way it has. It hadnt occured to me the impact that had on women, but you're absolutely right. At that point women lost their stake in the land, no matter what class they were.

I’ll have to look that one up, the book on my shelf is ‘Owning the Earth’by Andro Linklater. Ruth Goodman often talks about the impact of steam on domestic settings and women too. Economics, and who owns what how, MATTERS. I do wonder about the change in Rome, from Repubic to Empire too.

Edited to add, of course I’ve lived through the shift from post-war social contracts to rentier neoliberalist economy and witnessed the impacts and aggressive apologists for that myself.

"Unfortunately She Was a Nymphomaniac" by Joan Smith is helpful in seeing the power dynamics of Rome and misogyny without the male justifications that recent (largely male) historians have given to their behaviours. It also demonstrates why we have so little left of women of that era as many of the men around them set about destroying records and statues that showed how loved they were.

Ah, Joan Smith is wonderful! I heard her on Julie Bindel's podcast talking about Unfortunately she was a Nypho. Although I havent read it yet I really enjoyed her explanation. This is the one if anyone is inclined https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/julie-bindels-writing-and-podc-5832920/episodes/unfortunately-she-was-a-nympho-230432352