The Curator
A life with tropical hurricanes and snakes
For 50 years Giuseppe Orefici has followed the secrets of lost civilizations
Speak about destiny! When he was four years old his father took him for the first time to Val Camonica to see the rock paintings and the engravings of the Camuni. The boy from Brescia was thunderstruck by the ancient symbols drawn by his ancestors. Hence, even today Giuseppe Orefici, a 54 year-old, architect and archaeologist, has not stopped searching for signs of the past, painted or engraved on stone. He has become a super-expert, called to every corner of Latin America to study settlements buried in the Amazon forests or hidden between the peaks of the Andes.
With a large brimmed hat on his head, glasses, a white beard around a sunburnt face, Orefici does not loose his calm before tropical hurricanes, humid heat, insects or snakes: in a canoe or on foot, notebook in hand, he ventures into the forest, he climbs along unlikely paths, noting down even the most insignificant detail. Objective: to enter a world that is still unknown, that of the very ancient civilisations that preceded the advent of the Incas or the Maya.
During his life he has excavated or conducted research in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and above all in Peru. Founder and manager of the "Centro italiano studi e ricerche archeologiche precolombiane", in Brescia and Switzerland, Orefici discovered the sacred city of Cahuachi, the religious centre of the Nasca. For 17 years he excavated amongst the temples of the abandoned city and at Pueblo Viejo. In 1984 he began to construct the museum of Nasca, which was inaugurated in 1999. In 1991 he began exploring Easter Island, thanks to the collaboration with the Ligabue Centre of Venice and the University of Chile. Here he discovered the biggest ceremonial centre of Polynesia at Tongariki.
Not very famous in Italy, Orefici is the protagonist of three documentaries that the BBC, Discovery channel and Gedeon have produced on the Nasca civilization. In 2001 other films were made regarding the results of his excavations on Easter Island, while he began a new excavation 50 km from Nasca to discover another city. The task lasted five years. It was a long time but this did not stop him from working in Bolivia where, recently, he discovered the biggest centre of the Tiwanaku civilization of 2,600 years ago. Orefici does not wish to disclose the location of the site.
He says only that it is a secret valley where an underground city has been found with paintings and rock engravings and votive stones almost 14 metres high. An imposing task that Orefici conducts with the help of his wife, the archaeologist Elvina Pieri, and a team of collaborators. His endeavours are financed by foundations, research institutes and friends. No financial aid comes from the Italian government: although Orefici has never asked for such financing, he says it’s not worthwhile because the amount of money involved would be very small and the paper work and the delays only make one want to give up.
