#matrilocality

[coochiequeens]

Womens history just got richer.

When the deeply patriarchal Romans first encountered Celtic tribes living in modern-day France and Great Britain in the first century B.C.E., their reaction to the roles of the sexes was one of surprise and dismay. The tasks of men and women “have been exchanged, in a manner opposite to what obtains among us,” wrote one Roman historian.

New evidence from Celtic graves now confirms that at least one part of Britain was a woman’s world long before the Romans arrived—and for centuries afterward. One ancient British tribe known as the Durotriges based its family structure—and perhaps property inheritance—on kinship between mothers and daughters. Men, meanwhile, left home to live with their wives’ families, a practice known as matrilocality that has never been seen before in European prehistory.

The work, published today in Nature, helps explain why women in Iron Age Britain are often buried with high-status grave goods such as mirrors and even chariots, says Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich archaeologist Carola Metzner-Nebelsick, who was not involved with the research. “It’s a fantastic result,” she says. “It really helps explain the archaeological record.”

Ancient histories—not least Julius Caesar’s 50 B.C.E. account of invading Gaul—hinted at female empowerment among the Celts. “They wrote about it because they found it so weird,” says Trinity College Dublin geneticist Lara Cassidy.

Many modern historians assumed the accounts were exaggerated; they dismissed rich female graves from the time as outliers. But over the past few decades, archaeologists comparing burial practices at hundreds of Iron Age sites from Britain to Germany began to think there was a kernel of truth to the Roman reports.

The Durotriges cemeteries, located in the far south of England near the city of Bournemouth, offered a way for Cassidy and her team to investigate. Burials there began around 100 B.C.E., roughly 150 years before Roman forces invaded the island. Unusually for Iron Age Britain, the tribe didn’t cremate their dead. Instead they buried them close to home, in the hills surrounding their farmsteads.

Whereas men were laid to rest with a joint of meat and perhaps a pot containing a beverage to sustain them on their journey into the afterlife, Durotriges women are often found with elaborate offerings including mirrors, combs, jewelry, and even swords. “If you judge social status by burial goods, then female burials have vastly more than male,” says Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell, a co-author of the new paper.

Over the past 4 years, researchers sequenced DNA from dozens of Durotriges skeletons in a set of cemeteries in Dorset, England. By matching identical fragments of genetic material from different individuals, they reconstructed a family tree that spanned six generations—many of whom were female descendants of a single female founder. Two-thirds of the people in the kin group buried in the cemetery shared a rare type of mitochondrial gene, a form of DNA inherited only from the mother, including some of the men who shared the same female ancestor.

Other genetic evidence from the Durotriges cemeteries pointed to matrilocality, showing that men joined the clan from other families. “Women are staying close to family and are embedded in the support network they’ve known since childhood,” Cassidy notes. “It’s the husband who’s coming in as a stranger and is dependent on the wife’s family.” Women were evidently a force to be reckoned with in this part of Iron Age Britain.

Archaeologists have found that members of Great Britain’s Durotriges tribe often buried women with more grave goods than men.Miles Russell/Bournemouth University

Such patterns could help explain finds elsewhere in the Celtic world, where women were sometimes buried with rich grave goods or even chariots. “We’re thinking this could have been quite widespread,” Cassidy says.

To gather further evidence, she and her colleagues re-examined previously published genomes from more than 150 sites in Britain and Europe stretching back to the Stone Age. Starting around 500 B.C.E., the diversity in people’s mitochondrial DNA declined, the team found, suggesting more of them shared the same female ancestors. There was no matching decline in the diversity of Y chromosomes, which are passed from fathers to sons.

That suggests communities across Britain were anchored by specific female lines, with men marrying in from outside. “The signal they see in [the Durotriges] case study can be reproduced in other British sites,” says Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology archaeogeneticist Joscha Gretzinger, who was not involved with the work. “That’s quite a smoking gun.”

The study is part of a growing use of DNA to reconstruct genetic kinship in the deep past—and use it to shed light on the structure of past societies. University of Liverpool archaeologist Rachel Pope says the research is starting to highlight the wide variety of social organization people practiced in the past, something archaeology has hinted at over the past 2 decades.

Some of the earliest kinship studies using ancient DNA, for example, showed that Stone Age farmers in Britain and France living in the fifth millennium B.C.E. were organized patrilocally, with women leaving their homes to marry while men stayed put. The new data from Durotriges suggest that by the Iron Age, 4000 years later, something had shifted. “This is quite exciting,” Pope says. “There are moments in time in which societies seem to have a lot of high female status.”

[dduane]

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. "This points to an Iron Age society in Britain where women wielded quite a lot of influence and could shape its trajectory in many ways," says Dr Lara Cassidy at Trinity College, Dublin, lead author of the research.

[satireinfo]

Matrilocality Poised to Change the Modern World

For centuries, women have been expected to abandon their families, their friends, and their mother’s secret lasagna recipe to move in with their husbands’ families. But new research suggests that 2,000 years ago, the Durotriges—a Celtic tribe in Dorset—flipped the script. Instead of women saying their tearful goodbyes, men packed up their tunics and trotted off to new lands, while women stayed…

[lazuilis]

no new art so i colored this

[monigote001]

Two full body commissions requested by @aviamly

Thank you so much for your help!

[autisticwanning]

Danmei / Baihe discord server!!!

:D Join my friends discord server, there are tons a nice members!

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Carrd: Ancient era rich lady VS time travelling lesbian

Novel Updates:

Yun An was a volunteer chosen among thousands by the space time research institute. Simply planning to record the true historical events of the military revolt in the year nine hundred and sixty, she signed the consent form, stepped into the time machine, but a peculiar thing happened during her travel through time, causing Yun An to be sent to an unknown place and time… This dynasty was not recorded in earth’s history; perhaps Yun An had entered a parallel world. This kingdom was known as the ‘Yan’ kingdom. It’s regime was similar to the middle period of the Ming dynasty. The economy was an unprecedented level of prosperity, and the men were regarded as superior to women. The renowned Lin family of the Yan kingdom lived in luxury and extravagance. Their extreme wealth had already continued for three generations. However, the famous Lin family faced an awkward problem at their third generation— the master of the family had no son. Although the master of the Lin family had seven concubines, he had not gained a son for years. Master Lin eventually became too old to have any hope for a male heir. The rise and fall of the Lin family now rests on the shoulders of master Lin’s only legitimate daughter: Lin Buxian. The Lin family appeared to be powerful and untouchable, but it was actually surrounded with danger. Their wealth was hankered after by powerful ministers and coveted by their relatives. Lin Buxian was a woman, but she had to step out often. Because of this, she was often denounced by the public. Eight merchants came to attend Lin Buxian’s twentieth birthday, but they heard the shocking news that her past childhood friend had already become the lucky son-in-law of a Minister, and he intended to take her as a concubine? Lin Buxian made an announcement to the entire kingdom during her birthday banquet; the Lin estate is looking for a handsome son-in-law, to marry and live with the bride’s family.

[terri-schmerri]

[nicolagriffith]

Snippets of the past—tiny cats, massive lakes, women ruling Iron Age Britain

Snippets—tiny cats, hidden lakes, and a powerful reminder (from a brilliant paper in Nature about matrilocal Celtic culture in Britain) that history is just a story—and the story depends on the bias of the storyteller.

Today I’ll focus not on the ugly news topics of the week but on fascinating bits of life in the past, in the form of massive hidden aquifers, cats small enough to curl up on your hand, and—saving the best til last—the proof that in Late Iron Age Britain, women ruled. Lets start with that aquifer. To quote from Live Science, “An enormous water reservoir — likely the largest aquifer of its kind on…

[beebo26]

When there is only 5 existing fanfiction of ruzhui

[fernssama]

Yunxi I did for pdl love exchange on Twitter!

[agulaboyfriend]

if anybody is interested, i made a subreddit for pdl's novels! i'm currently looking for mods and help with setting up the subreddit so if you are interested, come and join! link here

[stiltonbasket]

I'm imagining a-Lan trying to get along with her in-laws - how does that work? does Lan Fang have any sibs or is it just his parents?

I've always imagined Lan Fang to have either a younger sister or a much older sister who moved to the women's side of the Cloud Recesses before he was born, but I haven't put much thought into what she or his parents would be like, except that Lan Fang received his mother's family name so that he could become an inner member of the clan (his father is a non-cultivating carpenter who spends most of his time working on commissions at his workshop in Caiyi).

[sleeping-willows]

is anyone else obsessed with matrilocal marriage rn??

[lazuilis]

ruzhui nation wya

[blyneee]

Yun An and Lin Buxian life's could be easier if men in that era learned to shut the fvck up. Especially that bastard named Zhong! I understand Yun An's frustration when women is forced to abide by rules of the so called "nature" that men created.