Harriet Blitzer studied art history and archaeology at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, and received her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology at Indiana University. She teaches ancient and medieval art history and archaeology in the Art History Program.

Her field experience includes archaeological excavations and surveys in Greece (Franchthi Cave, Nichoria, Halieis, Peristeria, Kommos, Lasithi Plain, Laurion Farm Sites, Chania, Pyrgos-Myrtos, Western Mesara, Gournia); Turkey (Cayonu, Mardin Vilayet); the former Yugoslavia (Sirmium, Stobi); and the United States (Idaho, New York). She has published on Minoan implements and industries, Late Ottoman agriculture and subsistence, Bronze Age chipped stone industries, Aegean storage jar production and trade, pastoral life in the mountains of Crete, and olive cultivation in the Aegean Bronze Age. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2002, she was Visiting Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at the University of Athens. In 2005, with L. Watrous and D. Vallianou, she published a book entitled The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete (Monumenta Archaeologica 23), the result of fifteen years of archaeological research in the Mesara Plain of Crete.  In 2009, she was NEH Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.