Exploration Of The Alpine Region Endangered Outdoor Stone Conservation

In the last few years, more than 200 ancient stone statuaries were found hypaethrally in the arctic-alpine region of ALeTai, YiLi, Xinjiang province and have been classified as the 1st and the 2nd Level of China national culture heritage. These vivid ancient stone statuaries which made by a whole rock are the heritage of nomad who lived in the Asian veldt and significant for the research on social, religion, and ideology of Chinese ancient minorities.Nevertheless, the circumstance in which the statuaries preserved is really abominable. As been in the arctic-alpine zone, the statuaries were exposed in the worst conditions: extremely low temperature in winter, snow heavily and frequently, and huge difference in daily temperature. All the negative conditions mentioned above lead the terrible damage such as wind-erode and freeze thawing to the stone statuaries. As the result of the damage, increasingly crannies on the statuaries developed quickly and will eventually cracked the stone bodies in a few decades.What's more, it is hard for governmental surveillance on the heritage due to the outlying location where the statuaries stands and there are numerous difficulties to the related management because of the same reason. The statuaries are destroyed and even stolen frequently by the native and someone else.Thus, the whole situation is going against preserving the historical value of these stone statuaries. Normal Chemical methods for preserving stone relics are non-effective to these objects because of the special weather condition, and there would be unnecessary aged chemical materials left in the statuaries if adopting normal methods for the preservation.Considering this special situation, it is necessary for using a new material which can suit the weather condition of the arctic-alpine zone to reproduce the ancient stone statuaries and adopt the reproduction for replacement. The original statuaries should be moved and preserved in a controllable environment such as museum which specially founded for these relics. By working on the method mentioned above, the problem of preservation could be solved temporally and giving enough time for technology developing. Also, the historical information carried by the stone statuaries is being preserved on the original spots. Though the experiments, the writer finds the acceptable materials and the process technology for reproduction. The chosen material has good capabilities of anti- freeze thawing as well as the similar character to the original stone statuaries, and suits the local weather condition very well.