Matthew Lloyd

Matthew Lloyd is from the UK, but lives in Canada. He has a BA in Literae Humaniores (2008), an MStud in Classical Archaeology (2009), and a DPhil in Archaeology (2014), all from the University of Oxford. His focus is on Early Iron Age Greece, particularly burials with weapons and other evidence for warfare. He has a steadily growing bibliography of works focusing on various aspects of Prehistoric and early Greek history, and can be found most summers working at the British School at Athens to study the excavations at Xeropolis-Lefkandi.
Matthew is a contributing editor to Ancient World Magazine.

Bending in the grave
Killing weapons in the Early Iron Age Aegean
Most of the objects recovered in archaeological excavations are broken. Sometimes this breakage is intentional. In Early Iron Age Greece, particularly the tenth and ninth centuries, intentionally destroyed weapons were deposited in burials.

An accidental centaur?
Most of the Late Geometric Greek vases in the popular consciousness are precise and finely decorated. But sometimes, even Greek vase painters made mistakes.

Why study Dark Age Greece?
In the first Ancient World Magazine podcast Roel, Josh, and Josho discussed reasons to study the ancient world. Here are my reasons to study Early Iron Age – or “Dark Age” – Greece in particular.

A long history
The post-Roman use of the Colosseum
We tend to focus on how ancient buildings were used in Antiquity. But how they were used in post-Classical times is often just as interesting, as I discovered when I revisited the Colosseum in Rome.

Dionysus, masculinity, and the return of Hephaestus
The Greek god Dionysus remains popular in the modern world for his love of wine and the theatre and his outsider status. But looking at one of his myths through the lens of his masculinity shows how Dionysus can be more complicated than that.

A measured take on the Pylos Combat Agate
A small agate decorated with a battle-scene, recovered from the so-called “Griffin Warrior” tomb in Pylos (Greece), has been hyped up for the wrong reasons.