Paola Dematte

Paola Demattè is professor of Chinese art and archaeology. She holds a Laurea in Chinese Language and Literature from the Università degli Studi di Venezia (Italy) and an MA/PhD in Archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Paola has significant international experience, having studied and worked in several countries, and is fluent in many languages including Italian and Mandarin Chinese. In 2018–19, she served as chief critic at the European Honors Program in Rome, where she successfully guided two groups of students through their studio projects and organized exhibitions.

Paola specializes in the Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of China and has written on the origins of Chinese writing, early urbanism, archaic jades and on the rock art of China. Recently, she authored a book that explored the development of writing in China from the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age (The Origins of Chinese Writing, Oxford University Press, 2022). She also has a keen interest in religion, Buddhist art on the Silk Road and East-West contacts. In this context, she has co-curated an exhibition at the Getty Center and co-authored a volume on Sino-European exchanges from the 16th through the 19th centuries (China on Paper, Getty Publications, 2007).