You're kidding, right?  Obviously, there's "hundreds of tons" of Grand
Design there. Oral history won't get you much, unless he told someone why he
did it.  And legal documents might not be particularly relevant, either. I'm
sure that Van Gogh's alienists took a dim view of his work.

If you know where he was from in Italy, you might be able to see
similarities between his home landscape, and what he built in NSW.

A couple of comparable things come to mind in terms of obsessive builders...

1) Simon Rodia Towers of Watts:

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Watts_Towers.html

http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/watts/tower.html

http://www.trywatts.com/towers.htm

2) Mystery Hill ("America's Stonehenge")... apparently built by an Irish
stonemason in the 19th century, now passed off as evidence of pre-Columbian
settlement of the New World...

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n2_v19/ai_20159539

3) I ran across something recently about a janitor in Washington, DC, who
after his death was discovered to have built elaborate miniature buildings
in a rented garage from tinfoil scraps (references to that one escape me,
though).

Good Luck

LJ Cook



-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Bobby
Caillard
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 5:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Archaeoloty of a recluse


I'm a 4th year archaeology student at Sydney uni.  The research for my
Honours thesis involves a site created by a psychologically damaged
(highly likely paranoid schizophrenic)  Italian migrant who chose to
live as a recluse on a steep, rocky hillside on the outskirts of
Griffith, NSW, between the mid 1920s and 1942 (when he was temporarily
interned as an enemy alien).  Taking advantage of natural features in
the landscape and moving hundreds of tons of stone and earth, Valeri
Ricetti single handedly created a complex of dwellings, terraced
gardens, water cisterns, dry stone walling and linking bridges,
stairways and paths that stretch across more than a kilometer of the
hill side.
My aim is to determine whether there was a visionary grand design
underlying this large scale reshaping of the natural environment.  Where
scant oral histories and government records allude to a homophobic,
mentally deficient eccentric, I believe the archaeological record can
demonstrate a vastly contrasting insight to this man's character and
behaviour.
I guess the context of my research will be based on landscape
archaeology and the interpretation of what has been expressed through
this particular landscape.  I was wondering if anyone knew of any
similar or parallel studies.
Regards, Bobby Caillard