The Caviglione Cave is a horizontal crevice cave located in northwestern Italy on the Ligurian coast near Grimaldi di Ventimiglia. It is part of the Paleolithic find complex in the Balzi Rossi, a striking, slightly reddish rock formation in the immediate vicinity of the French border. The cave is an important Paleolithic site in Italy; it contained layers of archaeological finds dating back to the Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian culture, as well as a Gravettian burial and rock carvings.

On March 26, 1872, at a depth of 6.55 m, Émile Rivière encountered the foot bone of a completely preserved human skeleton, which he largely uncovered within 8 days and prepared for a block salvage. It was the first of 13 Palaeolithic human skeletons to be recovered in the Balzi Rossi Caves in the years that followed.

The person was buried along the eastern wall of the cave, 7 m behind the entrance, in the left lateral position with bent legs. Head pointed south, face west. In addition to a headdress made of more than 300 perforated snail shells and deer teeth, grave goods in the form of a bone awl, two large flint blades and other stone tools were included. Perforated shells were found below the left knee joint, which were possibly threaded and worn as leg jewelry. It is believed that the entire body had been sprinkled with ochre.

Based on the find circumstances, the size and the robust bone structure, Rivière assumed that the dead man must have been a “cave man with his chains of snail shells and teeth wrapped around his neck” who died in his sleep. He named his find because of its proximity to the French town of L'Homme de Menton (It. L'uomo di Mentone, dt Man of Menton). The following April, the skeleton was moved to the Jardin des Plantes of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, and was repeatedly examined over the next 30 years. For a long time, many experts doubted that the burial was from the Upper Paleolithic. The skeleton was exhibited at the reopening of the Musée de l'Homme in 1937 and has been kept there ever since.

During the investigations carried out from 1988, a cast was made of the skeleton embedded in the sediment. Subsequently, 3D scans of all bones could be made and from this it could be determined with a certainty of 80 to 96% that the buried person was a woman. The find name was then changed to La Dame du Cavillon (Italian: La Donna del Caviglione, dt: Caviglione's wife). Further analysis revealed that she was almost 170 cm tall, weighed about 70 kg and died at the age of about 37 years. To determine the age of the grave, several snail shells (Tritia neritea, Linnaeus 1758) from the headdress were examined using the radiocarbon method. The determined ages are between 22,450 and 26,660 years cal. BP. It is therefore assumed that the woman was buried around 24,000 years ago in the Middle Gravettian period.