par Vanhulle, Dorian
Référence (Valcamonica (Italy)), XXXVIII Valcamonica Symposium 2021. Capo di Ponte (Bs), Italy, October 28 to 31, 2021. Rock Art, A Human Heritage, CCSP, Capo di Ponte, page (279-287)
Publication Publié, 2021-11
Publication dans des actes
Résumé : Although Predynastic and Early Dynastic rock art in Egypt and Nubia is scientifically addressed for almost a century, interpretative analysis of the thousands of engravings currently catalogued remains scarce and tentative. If important progress has been made in the past two deca- des, recent approaches rarely take into account its great variety and often fail to address all its informative potential. Such studies are focusing on specific areas of the Nile Valley and the surrounding deserts, thus providing local or, at best, regional insights.This paper underlines the extent to which rock art can usefully complement archaeological data. Indeed, rock art has the potential to inform about the various communities that navigated the deserts and were in contact with dominant archaeological assemblages, namely the Naqa- dan cultural facies in Upper Egypt and the “A-Group” ones in Lower Nubia. Moreover, data at hand are now consistent enough to attempt a reassessment of all the available corpora in the perspective of comparative analysis. Preliminary results highlight major disparities between the main concentrations of rock art which are, on the one hand, the Eastern and Western Deserts and, on the other hand, the Nile Valley and its hinterland. It notably appears that Predynastic engravings along the Nile cannot be easily compared with their Eastern Desert counterparts and sometimes share affinities with Lower Nubian rock art, while Protodynastic productions are well attested in the Valley but far less in the Eastern Desert. These observations allow suggesting new research perspectives.

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