We’ve had an incredible first few weeks at TBI Turkwel! After our time at Mpala, we’ve hit the ground running and have been really busy visiting the incredible sites in the Turkana Basin and enjoying life at TBI! As part of the Environments, Ecosystems and Evolution course taught by Dr. Nicholas Taylor, we created toilet [...]
Hello again! I’m Ian, and I’m back this week with Owich to talk about the beginning of our last module, Prehistoric Archaeology, taught by Prof. Sonia Harmand. Dr. Sonia Harmand talking the students through the stratigraphy near the Nadung'a sites. We’re now in our last two weeks here at TBI, and it really [...]
We arrived back to TBI Turkwel Campus from Nariokotome on Tuesday, tired but happy. The day was spent resting and preparing for the final presentations in our archeology module. By Wednesday, everyone was back to full gear and we spent most of the day working on our presentations and the final tasks of the module. [...]
In December 2021, the West Turkana Archaeological Project (WTAP) in partnership with the Turkana Basin Institute, the National Museums of Kenya, and with support from the French government opened an exhibition in Nairobi to showcase the earliest stone tools in the world, found in Lomekwi, Turkana County in 2013. In June 2022 the exhibition moved [...]
Preparators from the National Museums of Kenya at the Ileret research facility of the Turkana Basin Institute, starting manual preparation and supplementing the field consolidation (chemical hardening) of Loxodonta adaurora cranium KNM-ER 63642. From left to right: Cliff Onyango, Robert Moru and Christopher Kiarie. Image credit: Steve Jabo, Smithsonian Institution A remarkably well-preserved [...]
A barren, rolling landscape and a ring of stones. Evidence of mysterious ritual feasts and astrological signs. The true purpose of the site long forgotten. It’s an image that conjures up ancient Celtic druids on the English heath, but ring sites aren’t unique to the early cultures of the English Isles. The Turkana Basin has [...]
The stereotypical image of the exploratory archaeologist doesn’t include a bundle of flags and a GPS. At least not for me. Maybe it includes a whip and a few Nazi’s to fight, but a less fanciful image includes a trowel, a sieve and an exotic backdrop. Now that we had made some pretty significant discoveries [...]
The point of a field school is not to go to sites where the action has politely resolved itself and examine the leavings of more experienced excavators who have sorted out the story preserved underfoot. That’s what museums are for. Or maybe really well illustrated textbooks. For the Archaeology module, Dr. Alison Brooks of George [...]