roadDB: An R package for exploring early human prehistory and environments with the ROCEEH Out of Africa Database

Macroscale and interdisciplinary approaches are emerging as central paradigms in the study of human evolution, as demonstrated by a growing body of large-scale, data-driven research. This development is paralleled by an expanding ecosystem of R packages that provide access to paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions, as well as advanced tools for spatial and temporal analysis and modeling. However, within this computational framework, direct programmatic access to comprehensive archaeological and anthropological data remains limited. We present roadDB, an R package that enables streamlined access to the ROCEEH Out of Africa Database (ROAD), a major repository of archaeological, paleoanthropological, paleoenvironmental, geographical and chronological data relevant to human evolution. roadDB bridges the gap between the existing R ecosystem and the ROAD archaeological dataset that covers most of the last 3 million years of human evolution across Africa and Eurasia and thereby represents the only openly available archaeological dataset with such an extensive temporal and geographic coverage. In short, roadDB offers the research community unrestricted, transparent access to a richly curated collection of site-level and assemblage-level information, opening new possibilities for large-scale quantitative research. The package strengthens the integration of archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence in macroscale analyses and supports robust, transparent and interdisciplinary research on the spatio-temporal dynamics of human evolution.