Insight of the environmental awareness on waste rock disposal at Heidong Quarry dated 1000 years ago in SE China

Similar to coal or metal ore mining, the stone quarrying industry needs to achieve reasonable waste disposal to relieve the possible damage of waste to the environment. It is believed that not just the modern quarries, but also the ancient ones, are required to deal with the waste disposal issue. A large underground stone quarry dating back to the Sui dynasty is located at Zhejiang province, southeast China. The quarry, named Heidong Quarry by locals, consists of 21 individual caverns and occupies an area of 27,500 m². It was observed that about 170,000 m³ of waste rocks are stacked in piles on the floor of almost all the caverns. This paper investigated the geometry of the waste rocks including dimension and volume, as well as inquired into the distinctive quarrying technique, Digging Holes for Quarrying Stone Slab, employed in the quarry. The rock mass characteristics in the quarry are surveyed and the excellent rock mass quality is verified using engineering geological and laboratory testing methods. Possible motives for stacking the waste rocks inside the quarry were analyzed, taking account of the social system and economy in that time. It is concluded that the ancient quarrymen chose to stack the waste rocks in quarry for eliminating farmland occupation by waste rocks. It is clarified that the waste disposal method adopted by the ancients actually reflects their simple idea of minimizing human-introduced destruction on the environment, when the concept of environment protection was not even proposed.