Dr. Laurel Taylor received her Ph.D. in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World from the University of Pennsylvania (2001) and teaches in the Departments of Art and Classics at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Her research interests have focused on funerary art and ritual in ancient Italy and exploring the social meaning of death through Etruscan and Roman visual culture. Her current archaeological fieldwork is at the Etruscan and Roman site of Cetamura del Chianti, Italy.