After a few classes, lectures, and labs, it was time for the students to try out their new skills in the field! TBI Turkwel is situated on the banks of the Turkwel river, right on the cusp of some rocky outcrops with sediments dating to around 3 to 4 million years old. Tuesday morning, the [...]
Welcome to our second blog post! The students have now arrived at Turkwel, the Turkana Basin Institute Research facility on the West side of lake Turkana. Before we made our way out here, we spent our remaining time at Mpala studying the ecology of African bushlands. The students listening to a lecture by Dr. [...]
Karibu! Welcome to Kenya! Beautiful Wildebeest Ecolodge outside of Nairobi, where the students stayed their first night in Kenya (photo credit: Evelyn Glaze) On Sunday, June 4th, our group of students arrived in Nairobi after their flights from the USA and Australia. With their arrival, the 6-week long TBI Origins Summer Field School [...]
A Tour of TBI Last week, students took a tour of the Turkana Basin Institute for the opportunity to see what resources TBI uses, understand what makes the campus so unique, and discover what materials are available to be used in their projects. The first stop was the energy systems of the campus. TBI is [...]
MPALA TO TBI After entering the TBI plane, the students flew north towards Ileret to reach the TBI facility. On the way, they saw new horizons and different landscapes that surprised them: remnants of volcanic reactions, a sea of sand that layers the land, and Lake Turkana. When they arrived in Ileret, the students were [...]
As most people are enjoying the beach and sunshine in the US, some Stony Brook students took a long shot and came to the shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya. They are here for the brand-new Global Innovation Field School! The Global Innovation summer program is organized by the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Stony [...]
It is finally the end of the Archaeology module and our field school students have learned a lot about stone tools. Now it is time to put them in good use! Cracking nuts using a hammer stone and an anvil is just the beginning of technology. To convince ourselves that the stone flakes we made are capable [...]
A major aspect and problem of archaeological work is the preservation of sites. Archaeological sites are prone to natural forces such as weathering along with human acts such as robbery and vandalism. To understand the problems facing current archaeological sites, the Origins Field School students participated in a cultural management project, where they not only [...]