Finally we bring the Spring 2016 TBI Field School to a close. The students have learned and accomplished so much during these 10 weeks. More importantly, they've made friends and memories that will surely last a lifetime. The students have gained a huge breadth of knowledge through many hours of studying, researching, hiking and exploring. [...]
The Early Pleistocene archaeological sites on the west side of Late Turkana are some of the richest areas for early hominin behavioral research in the world. Dozens of sites provide large quantities of stone tools made on a range of different raw materials. Intensive archaeologists studies in this area attempt to reconstruct hominin movements and [...]
We switched our focus in the Archaeology module back to the Stone Age, starting with some hands-on learning about ancient stone tool technology. Understanding stone tools by simply observing archaeological artifacts is a tricky thing - even seeing that these objects are artifacts can be challenging if you don't have years of experience. Many archaeologists have [...]
Profs. Richard and Meave Leakey stopped by TBI Turkwel for a visit with the field school students in between the end of the Paleoanthropology module and the start of Archaeology. The students have come a long way in this field school and were excited to hear from Prof. Leakey about his work and life in [...]
We made it across to the west side of Lake Turkana on March 6th. Having learned about the ecology, paleontology and geology of the basin from an east side perspective, we were excited to learn about what the west side has to offer. Many important paleoanthropological and archaeological discoveries were made in areas on the [...]
Nearing the end of the Geology module, we all set out for an overnight trip to the famous Koobi Fora camp area. The Koobi Fora area is historically significant for human origins research, most notably a hot spot for this discipline since the beginning of Drs. Richard and Meave Leakey's research in the 1960's and 70's. [...]
Part of learning about the geology of the Turkana basin is to visit and examine rock exposures related to archaeological and fossil sites and how to interpret the former landscape of past life. For this next part of the field school, Dr. Feibel told of the geologic history and gave us a tour of the [...]
It might seem impossible, but one of the most important forces of nature changing the landscape in the Turkana Basin is water. The Turkana Basin environment is arid, but even today water moves sediments around, shaping the geology of the area. Many wet and dry cycles have impacted the Turkana Basin – both on annual [...]