I apologise but I do not have any thesis about this topic from this period .

Best regards

Thanks anyway, Muhammad.

Sorry, I too cannot provide you with any specific references to PhD theses on this specialized topic.

However, I can think of three locations where you might find such references and might be worth looking into: 1) Quebec City, Quebec, Canada; 2) Montreal, Quebec Canada, as well as 3) Praque, Czech Republic.

Throughout the late 1970's and all of the 1980's. I worked in the socio-economic research function (i.e., Chief, Socio-enomic Information) of Parks Canada (Canada's national park and historic park service). In those years there were many research and restoration projects onging linked with the restoration of the historic stone walls and stone buildings of Quebec City and in the old historic port section of Montreal. I believe that many of these structures were orignally constructed with granite from the Laurentian Shield.

At the time, the historic restoration and preservation specialists were working with historians and historic architects from local universities, such as Laval University in Quebec City and the Univeristy of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).

In the 1990s when the funding for Parks Canada's historic preservation and restoration work declined due to changing federal political prioirties, many of the technical specialists who had been working on the Parks Canada Quebec heritage projects relocated to Praque for the surge in historic building presevation, resotoration and reconstruction that took place there in the early 1990s.

I trust these leads prove to be fruitful. Good luck!

Dear Scott

Thanks for your complete explanation. I will try to reach the Quebec city web site. Do you know the name of anyone of those researchers?

Best,

José

Dear José,

Sorry I can't give you the names of anyone working in that area anymore. My conctacts were mainly with social and economic reserchers in the agency, the universities and the private sector rather than the engineering and architectural specialists. Also, all of my old contacts there are now retired, as am I (sem-retired, at least :-) ).

Best regards,

Scott

Dear José,

On second thought, you might also try contacting the Canadian Conservation Institute here in Ottawa. They collaborate with Parks Canada. I will also check with a colleague still working in the management team at Parks Canada to see if he can suggest a knowledgable contact.

Regards,

Scott

Thanks Scott

Best

José

To those interested in this topic, and thanking your good will to help, I would like to tell that very likely the first PhD thesis on this topic was presented by Montserrat Casal to the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1989. It was on the Deterioration and conservation of granite monuments in Galicia.

Best,

José

Thanks. My contact at Parks Canada couldn't find anything.As a second line of enquiry, I wondered if you had thought of the restoration and reconstruction work on f the Inca ruins at Cuzco and Machu Pichu in Peru. Are you familiar with that work? I remember refamiarizing myself with those sites (which I had visited myself ,in my relative youth) about ten years when my daughter worked there on her MA thesis project in human and economic geography.

Hi Scott,

I've visited the site a few years ago but just as a touristic interest. My sources are published material and of course only those I can have access to. And I don't have anything on Machu Pichu. All published papers on conservation of granitic rock interest me and I thank any sending of pdfs if available.

Thanks for your availability

José