ABSTRACT
Stone at CYDT, a kind of volcanic tuff with moderate hardness, was cut into slabs, which were used to build water gates, bridges, houses, roads and ramparts in ancient times. According to the County Chronicle of Taiping written during Jiajing, Jiaqing and Guangxu periods, there were 14 weirs and 5 bridges and 12 water gates in Taiping County, i.e. Wenling City, in the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), and 2 weirs and 79 bridges in the Chenghua Period of the Ming Dynasty (1465-1487 AD), and 27 weirs and 115 bridges in the Qing Dynasty (1611-1911 AD), respectively. Of these, the Xinhe Water Gate Group, is a key cultural site under state protection, while Siqian Bridge is a key cultural site under provincial protection in Zhejiang. Most of the ancient houses and ramparts in Taiping City, Xinhe Town and
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction to ancient underground quarries at Changyudongtian (CYDT)
Huge underground quarries at CYDT are located at Changyu, Xinhe Town, Wenling City, Zhejiang Province, China. Quarrying started from the Nanbei Dynasty (220-589 AD) and expanded to a certain scale in the Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-907 AD), and to a large scale in the later periods of the Song and Qing Dynasties (1611-1911 AD). It has been heavily quarried in modern days. According to statistics, the total volume of quarried stone is more than 6 million cubic meters. There are 28 cavern groups and about 1314 caves. It is registered as the largest artificial caves by Shanghai Great World Guinness Office in 1998. According to site inspections, the quarrying means at CYDT is and has been the so-called ‘bar & hammer’, and quarrying marks left over on the stone in different periods of the quarrying history are similar, which verifies
Songmen Town were made of stone from CYDT, and ancient streets were paved with tuff slabs. Figure 1 shows the wide distribution of ancient bridges, ancient water gates, and ancient cities made of stone from CYDT.
