Artificial Cavities Commission - Department of Scientific Research - UIS

The International Union of Speleology (UIS) is the international body for caving and speleology http://www.uis-speleo.org/
Formed in 1965, its voting members consist of a delegate from each member country. This delegate represents the country’s cavers and speleologists, rather than its national body(s).
An elected Bureau runs the affairs of UIS between the 4-yearly General Assemblies held at the International Congresses. The actual speleological work of UIS is done by the members of its Commissions and Working Groups, which are open to everyone who is interested.
The Artificial Cavities Commission is a part of the Department of Scientific Research UIS.
Conventionally, artificial cavities are the underground works of historical and anthropological interest, man-made or readjusted by man for his needs.
Where climatic conditions or historical events required it, and the morphology and lithology were favourable, techniques of excavation or construction in negative (by subtraction) were developed, and they produced in the course of ages a large part of what we now call artificial cavities. They are underground structures, spread all over the world, diversified by age, excavation technique and purpose, and of which man is the speleo-genetic factor.
The humanity, since its very beginning, has been familiar with the subsurface and the underground sites. The artificial cavities are often the only evidence of pre-existing territorial organisations and of a lifestyle wiped out by the present urban development, owing to new and different needs developed in the course of time.
The “phenomenon of artificial cavities” in a given place, both by number and by extension, is in direct and inverse correlation with the hardness of the rock, and, as a consequence, with the easiness of excavation.