General Information

The East Greek Wild Goat style is named for the depictions of Cretan Ibex painted on many (although not all) of its vessels. It was a widely distributed ceramic group found throughout the Eastern Aegean in the Middle Archaic Iron Age (c. 650-560 BCE). Potters made various shapes of table vessels including skyphoi (cups), dinoi (wide-rimmed bowls), askoi (pitchers), and oinochoe.

Wild Goat was first named by E.A. Gardner in the 1880’s based on finds from Naukratis. He referred to the stylistic group as the “Wild Goat Style” after the most conspicuous element in the style, the ibex. In the 1930's R.M. Cook proposed three phases to more precisely specify chronology: Early, Middle, and Late Wild Goat Style, abbreviated as EWG, MWG, and LWG. In the 2000's, Michael Kerschner and Hans Mommsen oversaw an extensive program of neutron activation analysis (NAA) which demonstrated that Wild Goat style is one of several ceramic wares made from a single chemical provenance group (Group G/g), thought to have been produced at Kyme and/or Larisa, in the region of Aiolis.   

Wild Goat vessels are distinguished by a bichrome painting technique, using a brilliant orange-red shade as the background and a dull dark brown for detail. Coeval with the Wild Goat style were other Archaic painted ware styles, including Ionian Archaic Band-Painted Ware, as well as plain gray wares, such as Aiolian Bucchero (Kerschner 2006:115). 

Wild Goat style vessels were widely distributed far from their site of production, across the eastern Mediterranean and into lower Egypt, where some of the finest known examples were found at the Greek colony and emporion of Naukratis. Many of the Naukratis finds are housed at the British Museum, including the so-called London dinos, a vessel which has given its name to a particularly exceptional group, the London Dinos group, that has since became a standard to which other Wild Goat vessels are compared. 

Wild Goat is one variant of Orientalizing pottery, versions of which were produced on the Greek mainland, the Aegean islands, East Greece/Ionia, and western Anatolia. A particularly lively school was situated at Sardis, the capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Lydia (see Lydian Painted Ware - Orientalizing).

Fabric is gray. Vessels are painted biochrome with motifs of animals or mythical beasts. The main paint color ranges from a brilliant orange to a light cream color, and the details are always painted in dark brown. Wild goats, dogs, and hares are often depicted in friezes in between broad horizontal bands.Other animals often depicted in frieze are griffins, panthers, lions, bulls, and geese, though these species are found less commonly depicted. Horizontal dividing bands are adorned with loop patterns, hatched meanders and squares (crosshatched and filled with small ornaments). Other common ornamentation found in the dividing bands, as well as on the neck, shoulder, base, and rims of Wild Goat vessels include ornamentations such as geometric meanders, friezes, and other ornamentations, such as dotted chevrons, dashes, dot rosettes, dashed crosses, zigzags, spirals, lozenges, and pendant roundels. 

Aiolian Wild Goat

Naukratis (Egypt/Delta/Lower Egypt)

Khirbet er-Rasm (Israel/Shephelah)

Sardis (Turkey/Aegean)