How women ruled the roost in Iron Age Britain

BRITAIN revolved around women in the Iron Age with men moving to live with their wives' communities, their skeletons have revealed.

- By Ben Mitchell

Archaeologists and geneticists found the first evidence of female dominance in European prehistory by analysing DNA from burial grounds in Winterborne Kingston, Dorset.

After harvesting 50 genomes from the bones which date to the Roman conquest of AD43 they found local society centred around a female line of descent.

And when they looked deeper at other genetic surveys of the era elsewhere in Britain, the pattern was the same.

Geneticist Dr Lara Cassidy, from Trinity College Dublin, was involved in the Dorset project.

She said: "This was the ceme- tery of a large kin group.