Editing Red Lady of Paviland (section)

==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.<ref name="britarch.ac.uk">{{Cite web |url=http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba61/feat3.shtml |title=British Archaeology magazine, October 2001 |access-date=2006-01-13 |archive-date=2006-02-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060228141222/http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba61/feat3.shtml |url-status=dead }}</ref> Later that year, writing about his find in his book ''Reliquiae Diluvianae'' (Remains or [[relic]]s of the Flood), Buckland stated: {{blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sommer|first= Marianne |title=Bones and ochre: the curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland|year=2007|page= 1|publisher=Harvard University Press}}</ref><ref>[http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/buckland.pdf William Buckland] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180422005923/http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/buckland.pdf |date=22 April 2018 }} www.oum.ox.ac. Accessed August 3, 2008</ref> He believed that human remains could not be older than the [[Bible|Biblical]] [[Great Flood (Biblical)|Great Flood]], and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date to the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] era.<ref name=Aldhouse-Green>{{cite journal |last=Aldhouse-Green |first=Stephen |editor-last=Denison |editor-first=Simon |year=2001 |title=Great Sites: Paviland Cave |journal=British Archaeology |issue=61 |issn=1357-4442 |url=http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba61/feat3.shtml |access-date=3 August 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923173544/http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba61/feat3.shtml |archive-date=23 September 2015 }}</ref> Buckland believed the skeleton was female largely because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated [[seashell]] [[necklace]]s and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth.<ref name="Sykes pages 15-17">[[Brian Sykes|Sykes, Brian]], ''Blood of the Isles'' pages 15-17 (Bantam, 2006)</ref>

=== Later findings ===
[[File:Red Lady of Paviland from head.jpg|thumb|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.<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name="britarch.ac.uk" /> 

In the 1960s, [[Kenneth Oakley]] published a radiocarbon determination of 18,460 ± 340 BP.<ref name="britarch.ac.uk" />  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 (archaeologist)|Thomas Higham]] of [[Oxford University]] and [[Roger Jacobi]] of the [[British Museum]] suggested a dating of 29,000 years ago.<ref>*Jacobi, R. M and Higham, T. F. G: "The 'Red Lady' ages gracefully: New Ultrafiltration AMS determinations from Paviland", ''Journal of Human Evolution'', 2008</ref> A recalibration of the results in 2009 suggest an age of 33,000 years.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023}}

Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial, the cave would have been located approximately 110&nbsp;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°[[celsius|C]] in summer, −20° in winter, and a [[tundra]] vegetation. The new dating, however, indicates he lived during a warmer period.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023}}

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-[[nomad]]ic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023}}

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 [[flint]]s, teeth and bones, needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at [[Swansea Museum]] and the National Museum in Cardiff.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023}}