Helene Roche

French National Centre for Scientific Research | CNRS · LABORATOIRE Technologie et Ethnologie des Mondes PréhistoriqueS

Humans evolved in the dynamic landscapes of Africa under conditions of pronounced climatic, geological and environmental change during the past 7 million years. This book brings together detailed records of the paleontological and archaeological sites in Africa that provide the basic evidence for understanding the environments in which we evolved....

Over the last thirty years, investigations in the Nachukui Formation (West Turkana, Kenya) have revealed the importance of the region for human evolution studies within an archaeological sequence spanning the period 3.3 million years (Ma) to 0.7 Ma. Despite the numerous sites discovered, little is known about pounding activities during this time pe...

Jacques Tixier was an internationally known prehistorian and the founder of the technological “reading” of lithic industries. The first approach to this interpretation is based on experiments and the recognition of the chronological order of technical gestures.

Recent years have seen increasing interest in the study of Oldowan technological variability, and the observed inter-assemblage diversity has been attributed to a number of causes, including raw material availability, different hominin species, and cultural and diachronic variation. This paper explores technological variability through the study of...

Monkeys have been observed pounding stones and unintentionally forming sharp-edged, tool-like fragments. This deliberate breakage raises questions about the evolution of intentional stone modification. See Letter p.85

Reconstructing vegetation at hominin fossil sites provides us critical information about hominin palaeoenvironments and the potential role of climate in their evolution. Here we reconstruct vegetation from carbon isotopes of plant wax biomarkers in sediments of the Nachukui Formation in the Turkana Basin. Plant wax biomarkers were extracted from sa...

Les outils de pierre taillée sont d’excellents témoins des capacités psychiques de leurs auteurs. Quasi impérissables, on peut y lire l’agencement des enlèvements et les techniques utilisées. Sur cette base, on présente quelques stades marquants de l’évolution de la technologie lithique préhistorique, en analysant les capacités psychiques dont ils...

Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread of savannah grasslands. New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the dis...

The manufacture and use of tools by hominids have been studied extensively by archaeologists and also recently by primatologists, all of whom appreciate the relevance of tool-use and tool-making in understanding the origins of technology and the evolution of human behavior. Over the last few decades, there has been growing consensus on the probabil...

Hominin fossil evidence in the Turkana Basin in Kenya from ca. 4.1 to 1.4 Ma samples two archaic early hominin genera and records some of the early evolutionary history of Paranthropus and Homo. Stable carbon isotopes in fossil tooth enamel are used to estimate the fraction of diet derived from C3 or C4 resources in these hominin taxa. The earliest...

The origin and evolution of early Pleistocene hominin lithic technologies in Africa occurred within the context of savanna grassland ecosystems. The Nachukui Formation of the Turkana Basin in northern Kenya, containing Oldowan and Acheulean tool assemblages and fossil evidence for early members of Homo and Paranthropus, provides an extensive spatia...

The Acheulian is one of the first defined prehistoric techno-complexes and is characterized by shaped bifacial stone tools. It probably originated in Africa, spreading to Europe and Asia perhaps as early as ∼1 million years (Myr) ago. The origin of the Acheulian is thought to have closely coincided with major changes in human brain evolution, allow...

At the northwest end of the Lake Turkana Basin (northern Kenya Rift), intensive fieldwork conducted on the Plio-Pleistocene fluvio-lacustrine Nachukui Formation by the National Museums of Kenya and the West Turkana Archaeological Project (WTAP), led to the discovery of more than 50 archaeological sites aged between 2.4 and 0.7 Ma. Among them is the...

All modern humans use tools to overcome limitations of our anatomy and to make difficult tasks easier. However, if tool use is such an advantage, we may ask why it is not evolved to the same degree in other species. To answer this question, we need to bring a long-term perspective to the material record of other members of our own order, the Primat...

Brain enlargement, reduction in molar tooth size, increased stature and other features of early Homo did not evolve in a vacuum. These evolutionary changes refl ect shifts in a complex web of relationships among their populations, between early Homo and other hominin species, and between their biotic community and abiotic forces (i.e., climate chan...

Located in the Central Anatolian Volcanic Province, Kaletepe Deresi 3 was discovered in the summer of 2000 and has been under investigation since that time. Volcanic activity in the region generated a number of obsidian intrusions that have attracted humans to the area throughout prehistory. The stratigraphic sequence at Kaletepe Deresi 3, more tha...

Nadung’a 4 is one of the single carcass pachyderm sites recorded in East Africa during the Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene. The site has yielded an abundant lithic assemblage in close association with the partial carcass of an elephant. Conjoined pedological, geoarchaeological, spatial, technological, and taphonomical analyses have been carried...

Recently discovered and excavated in an extensive way, the only archaeological layer from site Kokiselei 5 occupies a particular place between the Kokiselei 1 oldowan site, and the Kokiselei 4 early acheulean site. The decidedly heterogeneous distribution of the artifacts suggests that certain aspects of their original distribution are preserved. T...

Colloque international Origine de l'homme, peuplement de la terre. Monaco, 17-18 novembre 2005

Cognitive abilities and techno-economic behaviours of hominids in the time period between 2.6-2.3 Myr have become increasingly well-documented. This time period corresponds to the oldest evidence for stone tools at Gona (Kada Gona, West Gona, EG 10-12, OGS 6-7), Hadar (AL 666), lower Omo valley (Ftji1, 2 & 5, Omo 57, Omo 123) in Ethiopia, and West...

Cognitive abilities and techno-economic behaviours of hominids in the time period between 2.6-2.3 Myr have become increasingly well-documented. This time period corresponds to the oldest evidence for stone tools at Gona (Kada Gona, West Gona, EG 10-12, OGS 6-7), Hadar (AL 666), lower Omo valley (Ftji1, 2 & 5, Omo 57, Omo 123) in Ethiopia, and West...

Relatively few remains of Late Pliocene hominids' knapping activities have been recovered to date, and these have seldom been studied in terms of manual dexterity and technical achievements. With regard to early hominid technological development, the evidence provided by the data from 2.34 Myr site of Lokalalei 2C (Kenya) questions both the prior a...

Libération, « week-end rebonds », 29-30 janvier 2005, p. 44

(ASF, Giens, 11-13 octobre 2005)

Kaletepe Deresi 3 (Turkey), archaeological, chronological and palaeontological aspects of a Pleistocene sequence in central Anatolia. Located in the volcanic area of central Anatolia, Kaletepe Deresi 3 was discovered in the summer of 2000, and excavated since this date, revealing the first in situ open-air Palaeolithic site in Turkey. Volcanic acti...

Editions Le Pommier, 128 p. (Le Collège de la Cité; série "Les origines de la culture")

Associé au 20ème Colloque de Géologie Africaine, BRGM, Orléans (3 Juin 2004), vol. de résumés: 42

Associé au 20ème Colloque de Géologie Africaine, BRGM, Orléans (3 Juin 2004)

Archéologie plio-pleistocene; Afrique; Kenya; Turkana occidental

Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites in the Nachukui Formation, West Turkana, Kenya: synthetic results 1997–2001. Stretched along the western side of the Turkana Basin, the Nachukui Formation preserves a large number of Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites. Research carried out by the WTAP documents hominid behavioral evolution and technical dive...

Faunas and paleoenvironments from main archaeological Plio-Pleistocene sites of the Nachukui Formation (West Turkana, Kenya). The Nachukui Formation is currently under archaeological investigation, especially within the Kalochoro (2.35 – 1.9 Myr) and Kaitio (1.9 – 1.65 Myr) Members. Six main archaeological sites have been excavated from this time p...

New hominid teeth from the Kaitio member (1.65–1.9 Myr) in West Turkana (Kenya). New hominid teeth have been recovered from the archaeological sites of Kokiselei 1 and Naiyena Engol 1. These two sites are located in the west side of the Turkana Basin and belong to the Kaitio member of the Nachukui Formation. They are dated between 1.65-1.79 and 1.7...

Well-documented Pliocene archaeological sites are exceptional. At present they are known only in East Africa, in the Hadar and Shungura formations of Ethiopia and in the Nachukui formation of Kenya. Intensive archeological survey and a series of test excavations conducted in the Nachukui formation since 1987 have led to the discovery of more than 2...

La Science au Présent 2000 (Encyclopaedia Universalis).

Pour la Science (juin 1999)

The evolution of Homo erectus cannot be fully assessed from a palaeo-anthropological point of view without considering the trends of his technological evolution. Furthermore, at this stage of human evolution, technical competence can only be inferred from an evaluation of individual performances collected through analysis of lithic assemblages. We...

the study of the large series of handaxes and cleavers excavated from 1983 to 1988 by the Mission Prehistorique au Kenya at the Isenya acheulean site shows that the blanks of these tools (flakes for the most part) were acquired in different ways, from an opportunistic adaptation (some bifaces) to total predetermination (some cleavers). The introduc...

Several new Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites have been discovered on the west side of the northern half of Lake Turkana. Those sites are well stratified within the Nachukui Formation, already known for the discovery of several important hominid specimens. The discovery and the age of these locations expand the inventory of sites in the Turkana...

Using the notion of "chaîne opératoire" and knapping experiments as a methodological approach, three production sequences of large tools are studied, which are the most representative ones among the different lithic assemblages in the Acheulean site of Isenya (Kenya). The progress of each "chaîne opératoire" is followed, considering the conceptual...

Résumé Isenya est le premier site acheuléen fouillé sur les hauts plateaux du Kenya. Sa richesse en vestiges lithiques et fauniques en fait dès maintenant un gisement important pour la connaissance des hominidés du Pléistocène moyen. Isenya est inclus dans un contexte sédimentaire fluviatile, indiquant que les hommes préhistoriques se sont installé...

This note enumerates the paleontological discoveries of the Afar Expedition in 1975–1977.