John Steinberg, an archaeologist in UMass Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, and his students spent the first week of December searching for evidence of stables and other outbuildings on the former Fowler-Clark farmstead at Norfolk and Hosmer streets in Mattapan.

As reported in the Reporter this fall, Historic Boston is preparing to buy and re-use the property, which appears on maps drawn between 1786 and 1806, turning part of it into a community garden. The organization wants to make sure there aren’t any important artifacts underneath the soil.

Steinberg explains what the students did, and how the work in Mattapan connects to a summer project in Iceland, in this video, shown here courtesy UMass Boston.