During a break in his interviews for the Headmaster position at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Wimberley, archaeologist and educator Dr. Richard Stark explored the nature trails woven through the idyllic grounds of the school. On the trail, Dr. Stark spotted an archaic stone projectile exposed by erosion, a Nolan point chiseled approximately 6,000 years ago by indigenous Hill Country inhabitants.

“That’s when I thought, this is it! I belong here,” he recounts, an easy smile lighting his face.

So too, did the interview panels, and shortly after this eureka moment in 2004, Dr. Stark became Headmaster of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School.

Having a Headmaster with a great love of the outdoors and contagious enthusiasm for archaeology gives students of the school distinctive opportunities for education and community service.


In unique collaborations with the City of Austin, the Texas Historical Commission, and local ranch owners, students from St. Stephen’s conduct archaeological surveys, identifying and mapping the presence of archaic and prehistoric cultural resources. The partnerships are mutually beneficial, enabling property and easement owners to get antiquities permitting work done, pro bono, and enriching the experiences of students in a redefined classroom of over tens of thousands of acres.

“It really expands the footprint of our school and maps on so well to our vision for how education should work,” says Dr. Stark. “Students need to apply what they’ve learned. Step out of the textbook and apply it. Step out of the parish and apply it through service to others or service to science. It’s not just the archaeology. It’s that applied methodology that I think needs to kick in at about the 6th grade. Kids need to start seeing themselves as adults that can give back to their community.”

Dr. Stark and his young student archaeologists are eager to further expand their services to the community by extending their existing letter of collaboration with the City of Austin to include collaborations with the Hill Country Conservancy and the Nature Conservancy. Just as St. Stephen’s students provided the survey data that enabled the preservation of archaeologically significant hill terraces in the routing of the Slaughter Creek Trail, they hope to provide the same assistance for an ambitious trail network envisioned to stretch approximately 35 miles from Zilker Park to the City of Austin’s Water Quality Protection Lands at Rutherford Ranch in Wimberley. Dubbed, “Walk for a Day,” the trail will cross properties and easements owned by several parties, including the Hill Country Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and the City of Austin.

“There’s no single coordinator for this trail; there’s no one entity that’s mapping it all out. It’s about four different entities trying to piece it together. If you have children involved, a school-led project can be kind of a glue. That to me is really the most exciting part for a long-term project for the school,” says Dr. Stark.
Generating the excitement of true discovery in a child is possible only with hands-on activities, and the rich archaeological legacy in the Hill Country is particularly empowering to students. The awe of finding a stone tool and sensing that connection with the last human hand that had touched it thousands of years ago is impossible to replicate in the confines of a textbook or computer program.

“You do that with a kiddo, and all of a sudden the chances of having them turn out to be scientists are pretty high, because they get excited,” says Dr. Stark. “It’s wonderful to get a child that’s just found something. They are scientists. Their sense of wonder is palpable.”

Students from the first through eighth grades exercise their muscles and minds in archaeology treks led by Dr. Stark throughout the school year. In reconnaissance-level pedestrian surveys, students fan out across the terrain, marking sites of interest with bright survey flags, and attempting to distinguish between rocks heated repeatedly in an ancient hearth and those merely kissed by flames in a controlled burn or wildfire. The discovery of a stone tool is always cause for excitement, as students learn the differences between form and function of tools such as Mescal knives and Clear Forks. Each stone noted and studied, whether hearth rock or tool, remains in their place of discovery, as the only collections here are of photographs of grinning kids, sketches, and GPS coordinates.


In excavation investigations, students wield shovels, rulers, buckets and sieves in student nicknamed pits: “Bob,” “Bella,” or “Pit of Despair.” Sometimes coaxing by example is needed to get students down and dirty in the shallow square excavations, as Dr. Stark hunkers enthusiastically in shirt and tie to demonstrate. Finding projectile points, including the base of a 500-year old arrowhead and a 1,200-year-old Ensor point launched from the surrounding hillside, provide additional incentive to methodically uncover each stratum.

With existing study sites ranging from the Mathis Ranch near the headwaters of Onion Creek, to the Rutherford Ranch near the school, and newly negotiated study areas such as the storied Dahlstrom Ranch, students will have no shortage of sites to explore. Piecing together the anthropology behind their finds will be an ongoing challenge.

“We don’t know what these people called themselves or what language they spoke. It’s like we’re trying to put together a puzzle with these stone tools. Say it’s a 1,000 piece puzzle and maybe we’ve found 20 of the pieces in trying to figure out what the picture is. We can infer, and that’s a key piece that I try to get the kids to think about. Here’s what you found, now make a guess, infer. And that’s an important thing for kids to do to realize that it’s science, ultimately. Hopefully, in most scientific realms, you have more than 20 pieces out of 1,000, but you are always going to have to make some sort of inferential leap of faith.”

The qualities of the Hill Country that enrich modern-day visitors and inhabitants of the area may be less tangible than those that attracted archaic and prehistoric people to this region, but the underlying basis remains the land itself. Prehistoric foragers and hunters were enriched with an abundance of flora and fauna, their specialized plant harvesting and woodworking tools providing a rich record of occupation. Herds of buffalo migrated at intervals through the former grasslands of this region, attracting nomadic hunters who left evidence of buffalo jumps, meat processing camps, and projectiles. Even wealth in the form of a trading economy found its source here, with the active quarrying and trading of prized Central Texas Chert. Obscured by the secondary growth of ash juniper and undergrowth from years of fire suppression are upland steppe terraces, which yield clues about foragers who may have identified themselves by their terrace elevation.

“Archaeology is subtext work. The world would go on just fine without archaeologists,” Dr. Stark laughs. “It’s not an essential function. But it connects so many different dots in terms of what we’re asking the kids. To me, there are trends in education. The trend right now, something we love, is interdisciplinary studies or integrated studies—it’s applied learning. I can’t think of anything better than archaeology that does all of these things; you get to integrate your history with your math and your science with your language arts," he continues.

"It’s all on one plane, and it’s applied. Plus, it’s hands on—it teaches kids how to use a shovel. It teaches kids patience. It teaches kids about the pace of good science—which is slow. It teaches kids about the value of getting dirty, and that’s not a small lesson, that it’s ok to put your nose in the dirt. I think there are all kinds of lessons to learn there.”

“I’m partial,” he grins, “but I love it.”

FYI
St. Stephen’s Episcopal School is located at 6000 FM 3237 in Wimberley. The school is accepting applications for admissions for students of all faiths in its programs for preschool through the eighth grade. Financial aid opportunities are available. For more information, call (512) 847-9857, email rstark@ststeveschool.org, or visit the school website at http://ststeveschool.org.