DNA analysis suggests Iron Age societies in Britain were built around women rather than men.

An in-depth genetic analysis of 2,000-year-old genomes has revealed that women were at the center of social networks in British Celtic communities during the Iron Age. Women were potentially very socially and politically empowered and shaped what their society looked like.

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.