If asked to name someone from early British history, most people would probably pick Boudica. The Iceni queen is not only the most famous person from Roman Britain, but arguably one of the best-known Britons of any period. Her story has inspired books, plays, and films – and, thanks to CBBC’s Horrible Histories, she even has her own song: ‘Boudica, Superstar!’
Boudica famously led her people in rebellion against Roman occupation in AD 60/61, but in the Roman world women had no formal role in politics, business, or the army. To Mediterranean writers like Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, it seemed weirdly barbaric that women in distant Britain could own and inherit property, rule, and lead armies. Iron Age Britons left us no written sources to give their own perspective on female roles in society, but recent archaeological and genetic research has shed vivid light on this matter.
Since 2009, I have co-directed excavations at Winterborne Kingston in Dorset, an area that 2,000 years ago lay within the territory of the Durotriges (see CA 281), and recent DNA analysis of some of the human remains uncovered at this site has revealed intriguing clues about how their society may have been organised. Samples from 50 Late Iron Age skeletons were examined in a project by Bournemouth University and Trinity College Dublin, revealing that 34 of these individuals had at least one relative of the 7th degree or closer. It appeared that the cemetery reflected a large kinship group – and 24 of these 34 relatives also shared a rare mitochondrial lineage derived from female-line ancestry. It seems that women had remained at Winterborne Kingston for successive generations, while a relatively high diversity of Y chromosomes (passed from father to son) suggests that the majority of men in the group had come from elsewhere.
The salt sellers