The Texas Foundation for Archaeological & Historical Research
TFAHR "Tell Ubivis" Project 2009 - Startzville Elementary School, Texas USA
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Tell Ubivis at Startzville Elementary School
Canyon Lake, Texas
TFAHR’s Tell Ubivis Project is a set of activities designed to bring archaeology into the
classroom. Working with school teachers, we have prepared a series of presentations
with artifacts (both modern and ancient), and a number of videos on various aspects of
antiquity and archaeology. The highlight of the program, however, is the “mock dig” we
create for students to dig up, document and analyze.
Our target age group for the Tell Ubivis Project is fifth through eighth grades. TFAHR first
launched the Tell Ubivis Project in Houston, at Annunciation Greek Orthodox School in
1996 and 1997, in cooperation with teachers who had worked on TFAHR excavations
abroad. A similar project was started in 2005 at Mountain Valley School in Sattler, Texas.
The article available for download here is from the TFAHR Publication of September
2007. In it you can find details about how Tell Ubivis is constructed, excavated, and
studied in the classroom.
Bringing Archaeology into the Classroom
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TFAHR has recently launched the Tell Ubivis Project at Startzville Elementary School (STZES). During the summer of 2008, a fifth
grade science teacher from the school participated in the TFAHR excavations in Macedonia. In the winter of 2008 we began building
"ruins" in the school's outdoor Learning Garden, with the help of STZES teachers, community volunteers, and students from Canyon
Lake High School and Mountain Valley Middle School. The site will be excavated by the entire fifth grade class (approximately 100
students) in the spring of 2009. Teachers of various subjects are planning how to incorporate the lessons learned in the field with
educational objectives in the classroom.
Construction materials and excavation tools for the Tell Ubivis Project at Startzville Elementary School were purchased with a grant
from the Comal Public School Foundation. Additional construction materials were donated by local Canyon Lake businesses.
A plan of the "ruins" is prepared before construction starts.
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Volunteer crafting "artifacts."
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Tell Ubivis in the Field and in the Classroom
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