Many congratulations to Dorian Vanhulle on winning a Polonez Bis grant for his project, “”Rock art and early powers in the Lower and Middle Nile Valley (4th-3rd millennium BC).” The Borderscape Project’s own Dr. Maria Gatto will supervise the project on the part of Iksiopan.
This project aims to explore how the rock art of the Lower and Middle Nile region was used by the rising socio-political elites to express and transfer their power in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC and how it can inform about the relationships and mutual influences between communities of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia. The results of the project will be incorporated into the current historical narrative through a holistic and diachronic analysis of the collected data, at regional and interregional levels, and discussed in the context of the state-building process. The results will also be linked to changes in the socio-political dynamics in Nubia. The project intends to make its results available online through open source WebGIS applications and open access publishing.