Scientists analyzing 2,000-year-old DNA have revealed that a Celtic society in the southern U.K. during the Iron Age was centered around women, a study said.

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.

Researchers have uncovered genetic evidence suggesting that ancient Celtic societies in Iron Age Britain were matrilineal and matrilocal, with women holding status and influence.

Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that an Iron Age community in Dorset, England, was centered around bonds of female-line descent.

An international team of geneticists, led by those from Trinity College Dublin, has joined forces with archaeologists from Bournemouth University to decipher the structure of British Iron Age society,

The site belonged to a group the Romans named the “Durotriges,” researchers said, and this ethnic group had other settlements, including a site near Dorset nicknamed “Duropolis” by the archaeologists who work there.

Julius Caesar, in his account of the Gallic Wars written more than more than century earlier, also described Celtic women participating in public affairs, exercising political influence — and having more than one husband.

Echoing the writings of Julius Caesar, the researchers further uncovered a footprint of Iron Age migration into coastal southern England, which had gone undetected in prior genetic studies.

The Iron Age burials of powerful women revealed ... divorce and lead the Celtic armies. Julius Caesar himself noted the seemingly exotic practice of British women taking more than one husband ...

Julius Caesar, in his account of the Gallic ... "But archaeology, and now genetics, implies women were influential in many spheres of Iron Age life," he said. "Indeed, it is possible that maternal ...

Female family ties were at the heart of social networks in Celtic society in Britain before the Roman invasion, a new analysis suggests.Genetic

DNA extracted from 57 individuals buried in a 2,000-year-old cemetery provides evidence of a "matrilocal" community in Iron Age Britain, a new study suggests