DAN
SANTILLO
WALES/VISITSCOTLAND/COLIN
KELDIE
Goat’s Hole
Goat’s Hole is one of the larger of the
Paviland Caves on the Gower Peninsula
in Wales. Currently above sea level, the
70-foot cave would have been inhabited
during the last Ice Age. While it is a
picturesque setting anyway, particularly
looking outward across the Bristol Channel
towards Devon, this eroded cleft is notable
for a remarkable discovery made in 1823.
The previous year had seen an excavation
of the site made by a group of archaeologists
who found animal bones and mammoth
tusks. This piqued the interest of Oxford
geology professor William Buckland who
visited the following January and unearthed
the so-called “Red Lady of Paviland”.
Initially thought to be the remains a woman,
what Buckland actually found was an adult
male skeleton dating from the Stone Age
that had been covered in red ochre and
ceremonially buried alongside shell beads
and carved ivory. In total around 4,
flints, bracelets and other artefacts have been
discovered in the cave, which remains a
fascination to geologists and historians alike.
http://www.visitwales.comNess of Brodgar
For years, the ridge of land between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar stone
circles on the isle of Orkney was thought to have been a natural development, the earth
having formed a distinctive, narrow whaleback shape over the course of many years.
Geophysical surveys of this Neolithic site completed since 2002 have in fact revealed that
this is no work of geology, but rather the product of ancient communities building on the
isthmus between the two circles. It is thought that a temple complex was created here, set
inside the natural “cauldron” of the peninsula and surrounded by stone structures believed
to have been used for various religious and celestial events. Evidence of tiled roofs,
coloured walls and more than 800 decorated stones have been found in a crowd-funded
dig that remains ongoing and available to visit via guided tours. http://www.nessofbrodgar.co.ukTo p: Ring of
Brodgar on the
isle of Orkney
Bottom: Goat’s Hole
would have been
inhabited in the Ice Age³