Bio

Lisa C. Pieraccini works on the art and archaeology of the first millennium BCE in Italy with special emphasis on the Etruscans and their relations with other cultures near and far. She lived in Italy for many years where she taught and conducted research in Rome and southern Etruria. Her interests include ancient Mediterranean artistic exchange, craft connectivity, funeral art/ritual as well as decolonization and indigeneity. She also works on reception studies and the shifting constructs of identity in the visual programs of ancient and neoclassical monuments. Dr. Pieraccini has published a variety of articles and chapters on aspects of Etruscan tomb painting and funerary ritual, the Etruscan contextualization of Greek myth, Etruscan cylinder stamping, museum collections, as well as the Grand Tour and neoclassical funerary monuments.

Dr. Pieraccini founded the Del Chiaro Center at UC Berkeley, is an elected member of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici in Florence and currently (2020-2021) a Fellow at the Townsend Center for Humanities at UC Berkeley. She has co-organized a number of international conferences in the US and Italy. She is author of Around the Hearth: Cylinder Stamped Braziers (2003, L’Erma di Bretschneider), editor of Pithoi Stampigliati: Una Classe Originale di Ceramica Etrusca (2010, L’Erma di Bretschneider), co-editor of the series Cities of the Etruscans (with Nancy de Grummond) published by Texas University Press and consulting editor of the journal Etruscan and Italic Studies. Before joining the History of Art Department, Dr. Pieraccini taught for the Classics Department and Italian Studies at UC Berkeley, Stanford University as well as Temple University in Rome.

Current projects include a co-edited volume on Material Connections, Artistic Exchange: The Case of Etruria and Anatolia (with Elizabeth Baughan) as well as a comprehensive study of the Etruscan artifacts at the Phoebe Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley where she teaches a seminar focusing on the largely unpublished collection. Pieraccini is teaching two new courses in the spring of 2021, Decolonizing Ancient Mediterranean Art and Revisiting Reception: Old and New World Monuments.

Books

Select publications

2023 Etruria and Anatolia: Material Connections and Artistic Exchange. Co-Editors Elizabeth P. Baughan, University of Richmond, Virginia, and Lisa C. Pieraccini, University of California, Berkeley. Cambridge University Press.

2018 “An Egyptian Tomb, an Etruscan Inscription and the Funerary Monument of an American Civil War Officer,” in An Etruscan Affair: The Impact of Early Etruscan Discoveries on European Culture, ed., J. Swaddling. The British Museum, 188-194.

2018 “Collecting Etruscans for California: The Story of Philanthropist, Phoebe A. Hearst and Archaeologist, Alfred Emerson,” in Etruscans in North America – Archaeological Institute of America Selected Papers on Ancient Art, eds., by A. Carpino and R. De Puma. Archaeological Institute of America, 45-58.

2016 “Sacred Serpent Symbols: The Bearded Snakes of Etruria,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections Vol. 10: 2016, 92-102.

2016 “Etruscan Wall Painting: Insights, Innovations and Legacy,” in The Companion to the Etruscans, eds., S. Bell and A. Carpino, Wiley-Blackwell, 247-260.

2014 and Mario Del Chiaro, “Greek in Subject Matter, Etruscan by Design: Alcestis and Admetus on an Etruscan Red-figure Krater.” In The Regional Production of Red-figure Pottery: Greece, Magna Graecia and Etruria, edited by S. Schierup. Copenhagen, 304-310.

2014 “Un brasero de Berkeley et d’autres vases à engobe rouge cérétains,” in Les Potiers d’Etrurie et Leur Monde: contacts, echanges, transferts, eds., L. Ambrosini and V. Jolivet. Melanges de l’Ecole francaise de Rome, 201-207.

2013 “L’inafferrabile uovo etrusco,” in Mediterranea: Studi e ricerche a Tarquinia e in Etruria: simposio internazionale in ricordo di Francesca R. Serra Ridgway, ed. M. D. Gentilli. Rome, 105-125.

2011 “The Wonders of Wine and Ritual in Etruria,” in The Archaeology of Sanctuaries and Ritual in Etruria, JRA supplement, eds. N.T. de Grummond and I. Edlund-Berry, 127-137.