South Italian ancient Greek pottery

South Italian is a designation for ancient Greek pottery fabricated in Magna Graecia largely during the 4th century BC. The fact that Greek Southern Italy produced its own red figure pottery as early as the end of the 5th century B.C. was first established by Adolf Furtwaengler in 1893 (A.D. Trendall). Prior to that this pottery had been first designated as "Etruscan" and then as "Attic." Archaeological proof that this pottery was actually being produced in South Italy first came in 1973 when a workshop and kilns with misfirings and broken wares was first excavated at Metaponto, proving that the Amykos Painter was located there rather than in Athens (A.D. Trendall, p. 17).

The interchange of iconography, techniques, and ideas between the major pottery centers of the Hellenistic Period was formidable. One can see the influences of Corinth, Athens, Etruria, and cross pollination throughout the fabrics of Magna Graecia. There are five regions which produced South Italian ware: Apulia, Lucania, Paestum, Campania, and Sicily. These regions, in turn, had various workshops within them.

Later centers also developed in Teano (Campania), Canosa (Apulia), and Gnathia (Apulia), but these potteries are moving away from Classical red figure towards the less figurative work of the later Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman Periods.

All South Italian fabrics were originally scions from the Attic workshops of Athens, when artists began to leave that city following the Peloponnesian Wars. The earliest workshops seem to have been founded in Lucania, and Apulia. Others were founded in Sicily, and then scions from the Sicilian workshops established those in Paestum and Campania.

South Italian ware illustrates many ancient Greek dramas and myths which are unknown in Mainland Greek pottery fabrics like those of Athens (Attic ware), Sparta (Laconian ware), and Corinth (Corinthian ware).

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