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,

Genetic evidence from Iron Age Britain shows that women tended to stay within their ancestral communities, suggesting that social networks revolved around women

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.