Paviland Cave, also known as Goat's Hole, on the coast of Gower, is Britain's most important Upper Palaeolithic archaeological site. Miss Talbot of Penrice Castle and others excavated the site in 1822, but nothing of note was discovered. This excavation piqued Rev. William Buckland's interest, and in 1823, while conducting his own excavation, he discovered the skeletal bones of what he believed to be a woman whose bones had been coloured red by ochre. He assumed the skeleton belonged to a prostitute or witch. The cave is 10 metres high and 7 metres wide, with a 20-meter-high chimney above it.

It was the site of the first systematic excavation of a human skeleton and the discovery of the first human fossil: the erroneously named 'Red Lady.'The fossilised skeleton, discovered in 1823, was initially thought to be of recent date and female. It is now known, however, that it was a ceremonially buried young adult male. The cave is now on the coast, but it was 100 kilometres inland at the time of the Red Lady's burial when sea levels were about 80 metres lower than they are today. It was built on a cliff above a varied topography plain, with expansive views of the Exmoor hills. The animal bones discovered are numerous and diverse: a rich, arid grassland environment supported mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant deer, bison, reindeer, and horses. Palaeolithic hunters may have driven game to its death over the cliffs. Predators such as hyenas, wolves, and bears competed with humans to occupy the cave; whether or not it was used as a domestic site on a regular basis by humans is unknown.

Only at low tide is the limestone fissure easily accessible. It has a nearly two-hundred-year history of exploration, beginning when archaeology was still an antiquarian pursuit and the ancient origins of mankind were unknown. Thousands of flints, animal bones, shells, and worked ivory have been recovered from the cave. The Red Lady's burial has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 29,000 years ago, during a mild climate period prior to the glacial maximum.

It was positioned alongside the cave wall, alongside a mammoth skull stained with red ochre and accompanied by worked bone and ivory, perforated teeth, and fragments of perforated shells, all of which were also stained red. The skeleton's DNA sequence reveals the ancestry of modern Europeans, indicating African ancestry. Artefact evidence also revealed the presence of indigenous Neanderthals, a human species, more than 30,000 years ago.