New Insights into Earthen Site Conservation

Earthen sites are ancient sites that hold significant historical, cultural, and scientific value, with earth serving as the primary building material. As places of great importance for civilization, earthen sites not only account for a large proportion of cultural heritage resources but also contain extremely rich historical information. They form an important basis for studying the origin and development of civilization and have great historical, scientific, and artistic value. The protection of earthen sites has developed into a multidisciplinary field combining physics, chemistry, archaeology, geology, humanities, and art. Relevant research fields encompass protection concepts, value interpretation, disease mechanisms, protection technologies, preventive protection, and the digitization of cultural relics. As a result, numerous excellent scientific research results have been obtained. This Reprint primarily covers Spain, Malaysia, and China, as well as specific urban case studies from Zhuhai City, Lishui City, Quanzhou City, and Weiyuan City. These articles cover fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) technology, surface micro-chemical analysis, microbial diversity analysis, erosion resistance testing, lightweight crack detection and independent physical simulation, durability analysis, biocrust analysis, erosion resistance mechanisms, and composite biofilm ecological protection technology. This Reprint provides a reference for empirical analyses of conservation techniques for earthen sites across cities of different scales and types.