Antigua cantera

During the adaptation work of the «Camí de la Serp-Puig de la Llorença-Cala llebeig» path, in November 2018, a limestone extraction quarry was discovered, probably from Roman times.

This material had various uses, especially in architecture, to make ashlars and voussoirs, to make hydraulic pipes or to manufacture parts for presses and mills. The stonemasons themselves were in charge of extracting the stones that they would later model.

The extraction work had several phases. Firstly, the land was cleared and removed until the site was discovered. Once the quarry front was prepared, the extraction began, which went from outside to inside, and from top to bottom, forming steps or terraces.

First, the block to be extracted was delimited by marking the cut with a groove of about ten centimeters. On this mark, with a punch, the holes were made where the wooden or iron wedges were inserted in a row. These broke the rock due to the pressure they exerted and finally separated the block.

If you look closely you can see a marked block that was not extracted. The measurements of the blocks were standardized, around the Roman foot (about thirty centimeters) or multiples of this unit. Once the piece was separated, it had to be roughed and left uniform so that, in the workshop, the final touches could be made according to the final use.

The different extraction fronts of this quarry ended up configuring these stands.