Red Lady of Paviland

Last updated

Red "Lady" of Paviland
"Dynes" Goch Pafiland (Welsh)
Red Lady of Paviland from feet.jpg
Remains as seen from the feet
Material Bone
Period/culture Paleolithic era
Discovered1823
Goat's Hole Cave, Gower Peninsula, Wales
Discovered by William Buckland

The Red "Lady" of Paviland (Welsh : "Dynes" Goch Pafiland) [1] is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton dyed in red ochre and buried in Wales 33,000 BP (approximately 31,000 BCE). [2] [3] The bones were discovered in 1823 by William Buckland in an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave (Paviland cave) which is a limestone cave between Port Eynon and Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea in south Wales. [3] Buckland believed the skeleton was a Roman era female. Later, William Solace examined Goat's Cave Paviland in 1912. There, Solace found flint arrow heads and tools and correctly concluded that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer or warrior during the last Ice Age. [4]

Contents

Goat's Hole was occupied throughout prehistory. Artefacts are predominantly Aurignacian, but also include examples from the earlier Mousterian, and later Gravettian and Creswellian periods. [5] The site is the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe. [6]

There have been calls to return the red skeleton of Paviland to Wales where it was discovered and also specifically to Swansea. [7] [4]

History

Discovery


In 1822 Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and found "bones of elephants" on 27 December 1822. William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at the location site, Goat's Hole. [8] Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Remains or relics of the Flood), Buckland stated:

I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle [ ochre ] ... which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12 mm] around the surface of the bones ... Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods ... Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones

Buckland's treatise misjudged both its age and sex. [9] [10] He believed that human remains could not be older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date to the Roman era. [5] Buckland believed the skeleton was female largely because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth. [11]

Later findings

Remains as seen from the head Red Lady of Paviland from head.jpg
Remains as seen from the head

William Solace made an expedition to Goat's Cave Paviland in 1912. There, Solace found flint arrow heads and tools and correctly concluded that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer or warrior during the last Ice Age. Over the last 100 years the date estimated by Solace has been shifted from the Mesolithic period (4-10,000 BCE) to the Palaeolithic era (35,000/10,000 BCE) of the last Ice Age. [4] However, before radiocarbon dating was invented in the 1950s, there was no existing scientific method for the determination of the age of any prehistoric remains. [8]

In the 1960s, Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination of 18,460 ± 340 BP. [8] Results published in 1989 and 1995 suggest that the individual from the cave lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815), during the later periods of the Upper Paleolithic. A 2007 examination by Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggested a dating of 29,000 years ago. [12] A recalibration of the results in 2009 suggest an age of 33,000 years.[ citation needed ]

Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 110 km (70 miles) inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago, it was thought the "Red Lady" lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period in the British Isles, called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present-day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, −20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived during a warmer period.[ citation needed ]

Bone protein analysis indicates that he lived on a diet of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomadic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial.[ citation needed ]

When the skeleton was discovered, Wales lacked a museum to house it, so it was moved to Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. The bones are currently on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In December 2007, it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff. Subsequent excavations yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum and the National Museum in Cardiff.[ citation needed ]

Evidence of earliest modern humans

Analysis of the evidence from the two excavations at Long Hole Cave on the Gower Peninsula, including sediment and pollen as well as the lithic evidence, has identified Long Hole as an Aurignacian site contemporary with and related to the site at Paviland, evidence of the first modern humans in Britain. [13]

Proposed return to Wales

The Red Lady of Paviland (which is actually a man) was discovered in 1823 by William Buckland a geology professor at Oxford University, and it was quickly transported to Oxford thereafter (some other artefacts were later repatriated). [14] [15] This prompted a two-century campaign for it to be repatriated. [14]

In January 2023, the artefact was nicknamed the Welsh Elgin Marbles , after another artefact with calls for repatriation from the British Museum to Greece. The Red Lady is currently on display in the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History, and is described to be "well cared for". It has been stated by academics at Cardiff University, that if it were to return, it would enhance Wales's national collection and draw attention to its archaeology and caves. [15]

University of Liverpool and Coimbra University in Portugal Prof George Nash says, "Some have attempted to portray the remains as some sort of ancient Welsh ancestor, which is palpable nonsense. Whoever he was, he was almost certainly of African or Arabian distinction, fleeing conflict or over-crowding in his more hospitable homeland. What's more, after the brief thaw of the Palaeolithic era, Wales was cut off again for several thousand years, so there's absolutely no chance of these remains having any genetic or cultural relationship to any modern Welsh person." [14]

See also

General

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gower Peninsula</span> Peninsula in Wales

Gower or the Gower Peninsula is in South West Wales and is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan, Wales. It projects towards the Bristol Channel. In 1956, the majority of Gower became the first area in the United Kingdom to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creswell Crags</span> Gorge with caves in East Midlands, England

Creswell Crags is an enclosed limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England, near the villages of Creswell and Whitwell. The cliffs in the ravine contain several caves that were occupied during the last ice age, between around 43,000 and 10,000 years ago. Its caves contain the northernmost cave art in Europe. The evidence of occupation found in the rich series of sediments that accumulated over many thousands of years is regarded as internationally unique in demonstrating how prehistoric people managed to live at the extreme northernmost limits of their territory during the Late Pleistocene period.

The year 1823 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creswellian culture</span> Archaeological culture

The Creswellian is a British Upper Palaeolithic culture named after the type site of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire by Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It is also known as the British Late Magdalenian. According to Andreas Maier: "In current research, the Creswellian and Hamburgian are considered to be independent but closely related entities which are rooted in the Magdalenian." The Creswellian is dated between 13,000 and 11,800 BP and was followed by the most recent ice age, the Younger Dryas, when Britain was at times unoccupied by humans.

The year 1823 in archaeology involved some significant events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric Wales</span> History of Wales before AD 48

Prehistoric Wales in terms of human settlements covers the period from about 230,000 years ago, the date attributed to the earliest human remains found in what is now Wales, to the year AD 48 when the Roman army began a military campaign against one of the Welsh tribes. Traditionally, historians have believed that successive waves of immigrants brought different cultures into the area, largely replacing the previous inhabitants, with the last wave of immigrants being the Celts. However, studies of population genetics now suggest that this may not be true, and that immigration was on a smaller scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parc Cwm long cairn</span> Burial chamber in Wales

Parc Cwm long cairn, also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber, is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5850 years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 12 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parc le Breos</span> Medieval deer park in Wales

Parc le Breos was a great medieval deer park in the south of the Gower Peninsula, about eight miles (13 km) west of Swansea, Wales, and about 1+14 miles (2.0 km) north of the Bristol Channel. The park was an enclosed, oval area of 6.7 miles (10.8 km) in circumference, covering about 2,000 acres (810 ha) and measuring 2+12 miles (east–west) by just over 1+34 miles. Parc le Breos was established in the 1220s CE by John de Braose, Marcher Lord of Gower and husband to Margaret Ferch Llywelyn, Llywelyn Fawr's daughter. Other than for deer husbandry, the park received an income from agistment, pannage, and from sales of wild honey, ferns and dead wood. There is evidence of rabbit warrens in the park. Whether the warrens were free or domestic is unknown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymonden</span> Cave and archaeological site in France

Raymonden is a prehistoric cave near Chancelade in the French département Dordogne. The cave was inhabited during the Upper Paleolithic and contained, besides many artefacts, a human skeleton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kendrick's Cave</span> Cave and archaeological site in the United Kingdom

Kendrick's Cave on the Great Orme, Llandudno, Wales, was the site of important archaeological finds by Thomas Kendrick in 1880. The site is a small natural cavern on the south of the Great Orme Head, a limestone massif on the seaward side of Llandudno.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cathole Cave</span> Cave and archaeological site in Wales

Cathole Cave, Cat Hole Cave or Cathole Rock Cave, is a cave near Parc Cwm long cairn at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula, Wales. It is a steep limestone outcrop, about 200 yards (180 m) north of the cromlech along the Parc le Breos Cwm valley and near the top of the gorge, about 50 feet (15 m) from the valley floor. The cave is a deep triangular fissure penetrating the hillside and narrowing towards the top. It has two entrances, with a natural platform outside the larger of the two. It is about seven 12 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mladeč caves</span> Cave complex and archaeological site in the Czech Republic

The Mladečské Caves are a cave complex in the municipality of Mladeč in the Czech Republic. It is located in the Třesín National Nature Monument within the Litovelské Pomoraví Protected Landscape Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pair-non-Pair</span> Cave and archaeological site in southwestern France

The Pair-non-Pair Cave is located near the village of Prignac-et-Marcamps, Aquitaine:Gironde (33) department in France. Only discovered in 1881 it is known for remarkable prehistoric parietal engravings - petroglyphic representations of wild animals, "which rank among the most ancient examples of art made by prehistoric" humans, dating back to between 30,000 and 25,000 BP, the Aurignacian cultural period of the Upper Paleolithic.

Long Hole, also spelled Longhole, is a limestone cave on the south coast of the Gower Peninsula between Paviland and Port Eynon. It is relatively small, measuring about 15 m (49 ft) deep after several excavations. It was first excavated in 1861 by Colonel E. R. Wood. Wood found evidence of a lithic assemblage and faunal remains. The faunal remains included cave hyena, reindeer, Woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, straight-tusked elephant and wild horse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Satsurblia Cave</span> Cave and archaeological site in Georgia

Satsurblia Cave Natural Monument is a paleoanthropological site located 1.2 km from Kumistavi village, Tsqaltubo Municipality, in the Imereti region of Georgia, 287 meters above sea level. The karst cave was first excavated in 1976 by A. N. Kalandadze. In the Middle Ages the cave was used as a refuge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sirgenstein Cave</span> Cave in Germany

The small Sirgenstein Cave, German: Sirgensteinhöhle is situated 565 m (1,854 ft) above sea level inside the 20 m (66 ft) high Sirgenstein, a limestone rock. The cave sits 35 m (115 ft) above the Ach River valley bottom in the central Swabian Jura, southern Germany. Archaeologist R. R. Schmidt excavated the site in 1906 during which he identified indices of prehistoric human presence. He recorded the complete stratigraphic sequence of Palaeolithic and Neolithic origin. In his 1910 analysis Schmidt inspired future archaeologists with his pioneering concept of including the excavation site within its geographic region, contextualizing it within a wide scientific spectrum and demonstrated valuable results as he correlated the Sirgenstein layer structure to those of prehistoric sites in France. Mammoth ivory beads dating from 39,000 to 35,000 years ago have been uncovered at the cave. Because of its historical and cultural significance and its testimony to the development of Paleolithic art, the cave was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura site in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cave of Aurignac</span> Cave and archaeological site in southwestern France

The Cave of Aurignac is an archaeological site in the commune of Aurignac, Haute-Garonne department in southwestern France. Sediment excavation and artefact documentation since 1860 confirm the idea of the arrival and permanent presence of European early modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic. The eponymous location represents the type site of the Aurignacian, the earliest known culture attributed to modern humans in western Eurasia. Assemblages of Aurignacian tool making tradition can be found in the cultural sediments of numerous sites from around 45,000 years BP to around 26,000 years BP. In recognition of its significance for various scientific fields and the 19th-century pioneering work of Édouard Lartet the Cave of Aurignac was officially declared a national Historic Monument of France by order of May 26, 1921.

Roger Michael Jacobi was a British archaeologist specialising in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Britain. Known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of British prehistory, Jacobi authored several key synthetic volumes and worked to catalogue, sequence and reanalyse collections from across Britain and northwestern Europe. Sections of his extensive personal archive were posthumously published as the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Artefact (PaMELA) database. He studied archaeology at Jesus College, Cambridge, and held positions at Lancaster University, the University of Nottingham, and the British Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaeology of Wales</span> Study of human occupation in Wales

The archaeology of Wales is the study of human occupation within the country of Wales which has been occupied by modern humans since 225,000 BCE, with continuous occupation from 9,000 BCE. Analysis of the sites, artefacts and other archaeological data within Wales details its complex social landscape and evolution from Prehistoric times to the Industrial period. This study is undertaken by academic institutions, consultancies, charities as well as government organisations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Welsh artefacts in museums outside Wales</span> Archaeological repatriation

Various artefacts originally found in or culturally important to Wales, are housed in museums outside the country, namely in England and France. Their housing outside of Wales has been controversial to some in Wales, calling for some artefacts to be repatriated (returned) back to Wales, while others argue Wales lacks the necessary museums and security for the artefacts to be housed in Wales safely.

References

  1. "BBC - Cymru - Hanes - Themau - Cymru cyn Cristnogaeth". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
  2. Richards, M. P.; Trinkaus, E. (September 2009). "Out of Africa: modern human origins special feature: isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 106 (38): 16034–16039. Bibcode:2009PNAS..10616034R. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903821106 . PMC   2752538 . PMID   19706482.
  3. 1 2 "Ancient skeleton was 'even older'". BBC News . 30 October 2007. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 "Red Lady of Paviland: Should remains come back to Wales?". BBC News. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  5. 1 2 Aldhouse-Green, Stephen (2001). Denison, Simon (ed.). "Great Sites: Paviland Cave". British Archaeology (61). ISSN   1357-4442. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  6. Callaway, Ewen (2 May 2012). "Archaeology: Date with history". Nature. 485 (7396): 27–29. Bibcode:2012Natur.485...27C. doi: 10.1038/485027a . PMID   22552075.
  7. "Buried treasure: calls for important Welsh artefacts to be brought back home". Nation.Cymru. 25 September 2021. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  8. 1 2 3 "British Archaeology magazine, October 2001". Archived from the original on 28 February 2006. Retrieved 13 January 2006.
  9. Sommer, Marianne (2007). Bones and ochre: the curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland. Harvard University Press. p. 1.
  10. William Buckland www.oum.ox.ac. Accessed August 3, 2008
  11. Sykes, Brian, Blood of the Isles pages 15-17 (Bantam, 2006)
    • Jacobi, R. M and Higham, T. F. G: "The 'Red Lady' ages gracefully: New Ultrafiltration AMS determinations from Paviland", Journal of Human Evolution, 2008
  12. Dinnis, R (2012). "Identification Of Longhole (Gower) As An Aurignacian Site". Lithics: The Journal of the Lithic Studies Society. 33: 17–29. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  13. 1 2 3 "Red Lady of Paviland: Should remains come back to Wales?". BBC News. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  14. 1 2 Reynolds, Ffion; Mulville, Jacqui (18 January 2023). "Red Lady of Paviland: the story of a 33,000 year-old-skeleton – and the calls for it to return to Wales". The Conversation. Retrieved 22 January 2023.

Further reading

51°33′0.31″N4°15′18.67″W / 51.5500861°N 4.2551861°W / 51.5500861; -4.2551861