About 70 square miles (180 km2) in area, Gower is known for its coastline, popular with walkers and outdoor enthusiasts, especially surfers.

Gower Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty covers 188 km2, including most of the peninsula west of Crofty, Three Crosses, Upper Killay, Blackpill and Bishopston.

The population mainly resides in small villages and communities with some suburban development in eastern Gower; part of the Swansea Urban Area.

[8] Wales is known to have been inhabited since at least the Upper Paleolithic period, and the Gower Peninsula has been the scene of several important archaeological discoveries.

In 1823, archaeologists discovered a fairly complete Upper Paleolithic human male skeleton in Paviland Cave.

In the 1950s, members of Cambridge University excavating in a cave on the peninsula found 300–400 pieces of flint related to toolmaking, and dated it to between 14,000 and 12,000 BC.

In 2010, an instructor from Bristol University exploring Cathole Cave discovered a rock drawing of a red deer from the same period.

The largest example of this type of Iron Age settlement in the Gower Peninsula is Cilifor Top near Llanrhidian.

[citation needed] Following the Norman invasion of Wales the commote of Gŵyr passed into the hands of English-speaking barons, and its southern part soon became Anglicised.

In 1203 King John (1199–1216) granted the Lordship of Gower to William III de Braose (died 1211) for the service of one knight's fee.

As an Anglo-Norman peninsula isolated from its Welsh hinterland but with coastal links to other parts of south Wales and southwest England, it developed its own Gower dialect of English.

Webley & J. Harvey in 1962 revealing the disarticulated remains (i.e. not complete skeletons) of six adults and two children, dated to the Early Bronze Age or Beaker culture.

Other finds are now held at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff: Early Bronze Age, or Beaker, collared urn pottery; flaked knives; a scraper; flint flakes; a bone spatula; a needle & bead; and animal bones – the remains of domesticated animals, cat and dog.

Archaeologists Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki note that this period of occupation may be "significant", with respect to Parc Cwm long cairn, as it is "broadly contemporary with the secondary use of the tomb".

139–82) Whittle and Wysocki suggest corpses may have been placed in caves near the cromlech until they decomposed, when the bones were moved to the tomb – a process known as excarnation.