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Environ Earth Sci (2011) 63:17871798 DOI 10.1007/s12665-011-1075-z
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Natural building stones of MexicoTenochtitln: their use, weathering and rock properties at the Templo Mayor, Palace Heras Soto and the Metropolitan Cathedral
Wanja Wedekind Joerg Ruedrich
Siegfried Siegesmund
Received: 8 March 2011 / Accepted: 22 April 2011 / Published online: 26 May 2011 The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract In the Aztec period and in colonial times different natural stones originating in the Valley of Mexico were used for building construction. Stone weathering was investigated onsite at various historical buildings within the old quarter of Mexico City. In this study, different aspects of weathering and deterioration at three signicant historical buildings will be presented, the Aztec excavation site Templo Mayor, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the colonial palace of the dukes of Heras Soto. Petrophysical properties of the main building stones of these structures were investigated like density, porosity, pore radii distribution, water uptake rate and coefcient, thermal and hygric expansion, and the mechanical properties of uniaxial compressive strength. A relationship between single critical property values, according to anisotropy fabric characteristics, and specic weathering forms could be deduced.
Keywords Stone weathering Mexico-DF
Petrophysical properties Isotropyanisotropy Critical
values
Introduction
Because of its geological setting, volcanic rocks are the most prevalent rock types in the Valley of Mexico. Mexico City, formerly called MexicoTenochtitln by the Aztecs, is located in the Valley of Mexico in the center of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. Located in the high plateaus
of south-central Mexico, it has a minimum altitude of 2,200 m above sea level. Mountains and volcanoes that attain elevations of over 5,000 m surround the once characteristic Lakeland area of the valley. Today only small remnants of the historical Lake Texaco are left, which once had dimensions of 72 km by 35 km.
Human settlements in the Valley of Mexico have a very long history; initial traces of agriculture around the lake began about 7,000 years BCE (Niederberger 1979) and the rst evidence of villages occur between 1,700 and 1,250 BCE, which developed the rst identiable cultures (Neiderberger 1996). Around 2,000 years later, the founding of the Aztec capital Tenochtitln took place in 1325. The city of Tenochtitln was destroyed under the command of Hernan...