The area which is the focus of the Munich University Attab to Ferka Survey Project (MUAFS) is a stretch along the Nile including various islands between Attab and Ferka in northern Sudan. Throughout the ages, the area has been a contact zone between various cultural groups and either the northernmost realm (e.g. for the Kerma Kingdom) or the southernmost region of influence (e.g. for the Egyptians in the early New Kingdom). The MUAFS concession was previously surveyed by the Sudan Antiquities Service together with the French Archaeological Research Unit under the direction of André Vila in the 1970s and multiple sites, comprising settlement and funerary remains as well as rock art, fortresses and churches, spanning from the Palaeolithic to Post-Medieval periods were documented. The MUAFS project applies a landscape biography approach, investigating encounters of humans and landscapes in a peripheral borderscape with a longue-durée perspective, considering all attested finds from Palaeolithic times until the Islamic age. The major goal is to evaluate the specific living conditions in this contact space with a special focus on humans, human activities, technologies, materiality as well as animals. The paper will give an overview of the activities and results of the MUAFS project from its start in 2018 until 2022, with a special focus on the ongoing subproject ERC DiverseNile focusing on the Bronze Age remains.

Wadi Gorgod is located on the western bank of the Third Cataract region in northern Sudan. Archaeological research in Wadi Gorgod was undertaken from the early '60s of the 20th century till the first of the 21th century. These studies divided the rock art in the wadi into three main areas of c. 10km each, designated A, B and C. This constituted 36 rock art sites. This still remains a valuable source, but they focused on specific rock art types (typically animals) and did not document other drawings and archaeological sites associated with these pieces, which are vital in interpreting these sites. Furthermore, the GPS coordinates of the sites were not recorded, while photographic records were limited, and pieces were typically drawn without a scale. Systematic fieldwork in this region is needed, prompting the first season of archaeological survey for the Western Desert of the Third Cataract Region Project. The results of the first season showed that there are more than three thousand pieces of rock art, some of which were reported by Allard-Huard but others were discovered and reported for the first time. Also the results of this season showed that the archaeological features in Wadi Gorgod comprise not just rock art but also Palaeolithic workshops, Neolithic and Christian settlements, and tethering stones, with wadi wall and stone structures reported in this Wadi. These sites have not previously been documented or monitored, with the primary research foci among projects undertaken in the region to date being on rock art alone, despite the importance of such associated sites for contextualising interpretations of identified rock art.

From the beginning of organized archaeological work in the 1920s until now, archaeological sites of various cultural periods have been discovered centered on the banks of the Nile and the watercourse and ancient valleys and on the highlands and slopes. The Abu Sara area, which is located on the eastern bank of the Nile and north of the third cataract region, is an area with many archaeological sites, making it an important region. In particular, the area has been devastated by the indiscriminate gold mining that has been active in the past few years. The area was surveyed under the north of Al-Mahas archaeological and heritage survey project of the Department of Archaeology, University of Khartoum. The results of the survey revealed a number of archaeological sites belonging to different cultural periods from prehistory to historical periods; Christian period sites made up the largest share. Research has focused on destroyed sites in an effort to document them and preserve this important cultural heritage landscape from extinction.

Built on, and wedged between some dark volcanic rocks in the Third Nile Cataract region, the small mud-brick church of Miseeda is a focus of a new archaeological project of the University of Warsaw. The church stands out from other Nubian churches due to a feature not attested elsewhere: in the place where the apse is expected, it incorporates petroglyphs of a life-size anthropomorphic figure and two rams, all predating the foundation of the edifice. This rock art composition, possibly of Kushite origin, seems to have been reinterpreted by Christian builders of the church and likely equaled with the figure of Christ, since the rock-face itself has become the eastern wall of the building. Previous research in the region showed that the areas of Miseeda village, especially on the island and along the river, and the Wadi Farja, in which the church is located, contain other rock art sites, datable to various periods. The known sites include, for instance, depictions of wild animals, executed with rarely attested skill, as well as less refined copies of the church petroglyph. One of the current Project’s aims is a thorough exploration of an extensive area with the church in its centre, in order to record other archaeological remains, including rock art sites. Although the Project has already commenced the initial fieldwork, a proper survey has not yet been conducted. Nevertheless, based on the already known images and a few new ones discovered during preliminary reconnaissance, this presentation aims to synthesize our knowledge of the local rock art and define some principal questions for the forthcoming research. Among them is the issue of a transition of Kushite/Meroitic landscape into the Christian one and the potential role of rock art in this process. While the pre-Christian petroglyphs indicate a special significance of the area directly surrounding the later church, a wider survey should enhance our understanding on a larger scale. Rock art research in this area appears thus not only as an inquiry into a Christian period relationship with the landscape, but also investigates similar pre-Christian relationships, in which rock art seems to have played a significant role.