The Red "Lady" of Paviland () is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton dyed in red ochre and buried in Wales approximately 34,000 years Before Present (approximately 32,000 BCE). 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. 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.
Goat's Hole was occupied throughout prehistory. Artefacts are predominantly Aurignacian, but also include examples from the earlier Mousterian (Neanderthal), and Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician and later Gravettian and Creswellian periods. The site is the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe.
There have been calls to return the red skeleton of Paviland to Wales where it was discovered, and also specifically to Swansea. Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Remains or relics of the Flood), Buckland stated:
Buckland's treatise misjudged both its age and sex. 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. 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.
Later findings
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. A recalibration of the results in 2009 suggest an age of 33,000 years. A later 2010 study revised this to around 34,000 years ago.
Proposed return to Wales
The Red "Lady" of Paviland 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). This prompted a two-century campaign for it to be repatriated.