Acheulean roots: the emergence and early developments of the oldest complex material culture – AcheuleanRoots

AcheuleanRoots is an international and interdisciplinary project that investigates the behavioral innovations that accompanied the emergence and early development of the Acheulean, the earliest complex material culture in prehistory. Focusing on technological and subsistence strategies, the project examines their relationship to environmental and biological variations, from 2.0 to 0.8 Ma. This period coincides with the first appearance of Homo erectus and with the extinction of Paranthropus boisei—the last known non-Homo hominin. Our analytical framework will target the pre-Acheulean phase, the Early Acheulean, and its transition into the ‘classical’ or Middle Acheulean from 1.2 Ma onward. It is based on the premise that resource management was a key driver of the behavioral shifts associated with the early developments of the Acheulean. The project focuses on the Konso Formation (southern Ethiopian Main Rift, Ethiopia), which provides an exceptional range of well-controlled chronostratigraphic and contextual data.
The analytical program encompasses comprehensive data analysis and literature review, in close relationship with the KONSO field research, co-supervised by both project’s leaders. This integration ensures a strong interdisciplinary foundation established from the outset of data collection. The methodological framework adopts a systemic approach to hominins, environments and resource exploitation. Resource exploitation will be examined through the lens of the chaîne opératoire of resource processing, from the acquisition and selection of lithic and faunal resources to their consumption/use, and their relation to the environmental and fossil records. Our results will be complemented and compared with additional evidence from eastern Africa, where the earliest Acheulean sites are documented. The expected results will offer an unprecedented reconstruction of the key thresholds that accompanied the emergence of the Acheulean and its gradual transformation during the late Early Pleistocene, leading to its most sophisticated expression from 1.2 Ma onward, based on consolidated chronostratigraphic framework.
The impacts of AcheuleanRoots are multidirectional, encompassing scientific advances, capacity-building, international cooperation and public outreach in a diversified socio-ecosystem. Given the hotly debated nature of this topic in the scientific community, the prospects for publication in high-impact journals are particularly favorable. We also plan to foster dialogue among specialists through a workshop aiming at establishing a shared set of definitions and concepts regarding the Acheulean, its subdivisions and distinctive components, whose inconsistent usage currently skews the debate.
An exhibition dedicated to the Acheulean in Africa is planned to showcase the most recent scientific advances on the Acheulean, in France and in Ethiopia. It will provide a broader audience with new insights on what made hominins unique from a distant past, what mechanisms drove the emergence of complexity in human-environment interactions, and what adaptive advantages led Homo to become the sole surviving human lineage, while Paranthropus went extinct. These initiatives will to lay the foundations for a sustainable project that will support a new generation of Ethiopian and international researchers, while promoting interest and awareness within the Konso community of its exceptional heritage, through an ethical cooperation that will ensure long-term mutual benefit for all parties.