The roles of women?

 Women held keys to land and wealth in Celtic Britain

Skeletons unearthed in Dorset contained DNA evidence that Celtic men moved to live with their wives' families and communities.

Well that was the first thing I read this morning and I pondered on it.  Perfectly feasible, this information had been taken from a dig down in Dorset of the Durotriges tribe.  One has only to think of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe down on the East coast and Cartimandu, queen of the Brigantes up North, to know that female leaders were accepted.  That leadership went through the mitochondria of the female, passed from mother to daughter is the theory of the archeologists who undertook the dig.

Boudicca was so inflamed by the rape of her two daughters by the Roman leaders of the invasion that she pulled an army together to fight them.  There is one horrible part to the story and it happened in Colchester (Camoludunum). The Celtic tribes were so furious that they attacked the town and murdered without mercy the Romans there.  Boudicca cut the breasts of the Roman matrons and stuffed them into their mouths.  It was a bloody revenge and of course she paid for it and thousands of her followers were killed in subsequent battles.  Her death followed by the taking of poison.  See Tacitus on his media story of the time.

The B/A barrow of the Egtved Girl

The Egtved Girl

So my mind slipped back to the Bronze Age teenage girl, the Egtved Girl from Denmark, in her cord skirt with the sun motif girdled round her waist.  She is also seen as a leader but there again she could have been a religious leader, or priest, if you prefer within her community.  She was buried in a ceremony in a halved tree trunk and a young child at her feet.  Not her child, it could have been a sacrificial killing. There is no DNA evidence to be able to tell.

And to add to my notes another thought.  Bath - Aqua Sulis was also under the influence of females.  Sulis was a goddess, her equivalent Roman God head was Minerva, then there is Diana the hunting goddess down at Shoe lane.  Not forgetting Rosamerta and the three matres at Cirencester.