The Secrets of Paviland Cave

Past Horizons (from The Guardian) ^ | Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | Stephen Moss

[SunkenCiv]

Paviland cave, on the Gower peninsula in South Wales, is a crucial site for tracing the origins of human life in Britain. It was in here, in 1823, that William Buckland, the first professor of geology at Oxford University, excavated the remains of a body that had been smeared with red ochre (naturally occurring iron oxide) and buried with a selection of periwinkle shells and ivory rods. Buckland initially thought the body was that of a customs officer, killed by smugglers. Then he decided it was a Roman prostitute... This misidentification gave the headless skeleton its name -- "the Red Lady of Paviland" -- and it is still called the Red Lady, even though we now know two things Buckland didn't: the remains are those of a young man, probably in his late 20s, and they were buried 34,000 years ago. The Red Lady is the oldest anatomically modern human skeleton found in Britain, and Paviland is the site of the oldest ceremonial burial in western Europe...

I ask Higham what we can deduce about the Red Lady. "This person probably had some kind of an accident. He's a healthy person, not very old, doesn't show any major signs of illness or disease. My guess is there was a hunting party, they were hunting in the environs of the site, there was an accident and the person was buried there." The cave, in Higham's view, was not a pagan cathedral but a convenient spot to leave a companion who had met an untimely end, and he says there is no evidence of subsequent pilgrimages, other perhaps than by doting druids and misguided journalists. His prosaic conclusion is unlikely to play well in the more poetic corners of Wales.

[SunkenCiv]

[Cicero]

Interesting story. I admit I had not previously heard of the Red Lady, or Gentleman, as he should probably now be called.

There’s nothing wrong with speculation or myth-making, I suppose, but this is a good, cautionary read on the dangers of making “definitive” archaeological claims.

Britain as a nice place to visit and hunt during the interglacial periods. That’s an interesting idea, too.

[SunkenCiv]

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[csvset]

Hunting accident? The red was an early version of blaze orange.

[pierrem15]

34KBP would have been near a glacial maximum. The sea level would have been 200 - 300 ft. lower at that time than in the photo.

[pierrem15]

"We found that instead of sitting where he had been before, in a cold period, it was actually in a much warmer interstadial [a relatively warm period within the ice age]. We think that’s why people were there."

Oops. The sea level still would have been much lower.

[SunkenCiv]

That’s right, and that’s even pointed out, I may have omitted it from the excerpting.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)