
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND—Archaeologists have begun to dig at Edinburgh University’s High School Yards where the Royal Infirmary, built in the eighteenth century, and the Blackfriars Monastery once stood. The monastery occupied on the site from 1230 until 1558, when it was destroyed by a mob. “You can already see seventeenth and eighteenth-century remains from the short trenches that that have been dug. There is also some backfill that looks even earlier than that. I’m sure some more stuff will be uncovered as the dig progresses,” said John Lawson of the Museum of Edinburgh. In 2011, eighteenth-century lab equipment used by pioneering chemist Joseph Black was found at a nearby site.