Exploring the Underground Palace of the Emperor Qinshihuang Mausoleum with High Precision Gravity Survey

Emperor Qinshihuang mausoleum is the first emperor mausoleum in Chinese history.Although archaeologists have made many great discoveries in the mausoleum archaeology, whether the underground palace of Emperor Qinshihuang mausoleum lied under the burial tamped mound and other problems remain not really clear by now. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the underground palace using advanced technologies in order to protect such an important cultural relic resources in science. It has been explored that digging area of the underground palace in the EW and SN directions is about 170m×145m and the western grave path has been discovered by high precision gravity survey. There would be a coffin chamber in the underground palace which is about 50m long from the east to the west and about 40m wide from the south to the north, the height of the coffin chamber is about 10m and the buried depth is about 43m; also there would be stone-made palace-wall in the surrounding of the underground palace, the central area of the palace-wall would be 145m×125m, the width of the palace-wall is about 8m, the height of the palace-wall is about 14m; and there is a thin tamped soil wall whose width is about 15m, height is about 30m on the top of stone-made palace-wall inferred from gravity anomaly definite quantity modelling. We thus consider that there exist complete set underground paleotomb architecture groups containing the coffin chamber, palace-walls, grave paths, etc. after large scale excavation under the burial tamped mound of Emperor Qinshihuang mausoleum, which provides the proof, from another side, that the underground palace lies beneath the burial tamped mound existing now.