A scientific study with important implications for archaeology in Britain and France was published last week. Using ancient DNA analysis and testing, a team led by Dr Lara Cassidy and Professor Daniel Bradley from Trinity College Dublin successfully demonstrated that iron age people who were buried in Dorset from 100BC to AD100 practised matrilocality.
This is where women from a community remain with their family group, or at least are buried with them, and take a partner from an outside group. Meanwhile, the men from that same community join another group when they find a partner. An alternative pattern, practised on Early Bronze Age Orkney, is patrilocality, where the men stay put and it is women who instead move into other groups.
The new findings come from individuals buried at the late iron age cemetery of Winterborne Kingston in Dorset. It’s an excellent piece of science, born from one of the UK’s leading research excavations, the Durotriges project of the University of Bournemouth. The Durotriges were a late iron age group that lived in what is mostly now Dorset and parts of southern Wiltshire.
