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Wadi Rum, a stunning desert expanse in the south-western corner of Jordan, has long captivated adventurers with its vast landscapes, but its ancient secrets have stayed hidden in plain sight. Only in recent years have archaeologists really started to appreciate the prehistoric and protohistoric rock art that dots the area. This rock art – both carved and painted – offers glimpses into the lives and imaginations of those who once roamed these lands. Most of the carvings feature recognisable figures. There are sweeping-horned ibexes, wading birds, camels, and human forms caught in various stances and roles. The paintings, however, are harder to make out. Long-term exposure to the harsh elements and intentional hiding by their creators make them a challenge to find. These painted images stand apart from their carved counterparts stylistically, and, until recently, there was an added puzzle: the lack of overlapping layers made it difficult to piece together their historical sequence. This, however, is starting to change.
In 2023, we led a special expedition to the less-trodden side of Wadi Rum. Our mission? To scout out hidden painted panels for potential dating and chemical analysis, while also studying engravings in the rugged uplands of this now harsh, dry landscape. Wadi Rum itself is far more than just a valley – it spans a staggering 750km² of lofty rock formations and sweeping desert vistas, about 75km east of Aqaba. While it may seem barren, pockets of vegetation can be found near water sources like aquifers and waterholes. Over geological time, water carved deep paths through granite and sandstone, creating dramatic rock massifs with towering vertical walls, jagged peaks, and tight inlets.
A crossroads of culture
Past researchers divided the rock art into three main cultural phases: Nabataean, Bedouin, and early Islamic cultures. The Nabataeans were known for their figurative carvings, while later cultures focused on abstract symbols, religious inscriptions, and popular text. But, as new findings emerge, it is clear that the story is far more intricate and layered, inviting us to rethink the timeline and meaning of this ancient desert art.
The Nabataeans, a northern Arab culture renowned for the construction of Petra, flourished in the southern Levant between the 4th century BC and the 1st century AD. While the heart of their empire centred around Wadi Musa and Wadi Rum in Jordan, their influence and trade routes extended from Damascus down into Saudi Arabia. The period of Nabataean dominance witnessed the creation of significant rock art across Wadi Rum and other locations, often marking routes and hidden water cisterns, along with profuse panels of engraved animals. The stylistic elements of their art reflect a synthesis of influences absorbed through extensive trade networks connecting them with regional powers such as the Greeks, Persians, and Romans, while still maintaining a distinctly Nabataean character. The most recurrent figures in Nabataean rock art include ibexes, identifiable by their distinctive sweeping horns, as well as depictions of human figures in dancing or warrior poses rendered in stick form or with anatomically detailed features. Representations of canines, likely symbolic of hunting dogs, are also prevalent. In later phases, panels increasingly exhibit camels and footprints, possibly indicating shifts in cultural and economic practices and environmental interactions. However, there is now a growing body of evidence to suggest that a considerable number of painted and engraved images pre-date Nabataean cultural ascendancy.
Understanding the landscape
One of the big challenges of a landscape like Wadi Rum is the lack of caves, especially deep ones, which have provided excellent time capsules for ancient imagery in other parts of the world, such as the Ice Age art of Europe, or the recently identified Pleistocene cave art of Indonesia. In southern Jordan, the few existing caves are shallow, with most art located on boulders and open-air panels along the sides of rock formations. This has exposed much of the art to the weathering forces of wind, rain, and sandstorms, degrading the engravings more quickly, while paintings tend to have a short lifespan. On art panels with multiple layers of images, though, these weathering patterns can offer valuable clues to the age sequence of the art. As we learned over the course of our survey, most of the older engravings are found on rock surfaces with a tougher, black patina that has helped preserve the imagery. This patinated surface is the result of the rock surface interacting with the oxygen in the air, so the team was able to get a sense of relative age based on how fresh (white) the newer engravings looked, versus the oldest images, which had reverted to the same dark colour as the surrounding rock.
Palaeoenvironmental data played an important role, too, in helping our team to build a longer cultural timeline for the region, allowing us to match up the animal species we were seeing in the imagery with the time periods when they were present in the landscape. For example, the prehistoric wild ox known as aurochs had gone extinct in this region by around 4,000 years ago, so our identification of an aurochs engraving on a collapsed wall block from the cave of Harab Anter must be at least that old. It is likely that this image, along with other aurochs engravings we found at this site, were created by hunter-gatherer groups associated with an Epipalaeolithic tradition during the early part of the Holocene (between c.11,500 and 7000 BC), a period during which the climate of this region was transitioning from a generally warmer, greener, and more stable climate towards an arid environment. Prior to the Neolithic, advanced hunter-gatherer populations, equipped with sophisticated lithic toolkits, inhabited a rich landscape of woodland and wild grasses. The fauna from this period of prehistory is reflected within the rock art and includes aurochs, fallow deer, gazelle, horse, ibex, and ostrich. At the same time, there was widespread domestication, with evidence of cattle, goats, pigs, and sheep. These domesticates occupy painted and engraved rock-art panels. As well as animal husbandry, early Neolithic sedentary communities, active c.8500-4000 Before Present (BP), were engaged in the cultivation of cereal grains, peas, and lentils, alongside the domestication of wild goats.
Our survey has further illuminated earlier rock art traditions within the region, characterised by large painted figures located in concealed niches or inlets carved into the towering rock formations. These images, which differ markedly in both style and execution, predominantly depict bovines, although their precise dating remains indeterminate.
The evolving nature of the region’s artistic legacy seems to reflect the cultural and environmental transitions within the now arid landscape of the Wadi. During this later Holocene period (4000 to 3200 BP), the environment was witnessing increased aridity, with more pronounced dry periods and the expansion of desert areas (as we see Wadi Rum today). The wild animals depicted on rock-art panels included the same fauna from the earlier period; however, ibex appears to be the most numerous figure present within the rock-art repertoire. It is probable that woodland-dwelling fauna, such as aurochs, fallow deer, and wild boar, become depicted less frequently due to a decline in forested areas. Not surprisingly, the rock art reflects the high frequency of ibex on panels that occupy the upland areas. In terms of domesticates, the rock art during this time provides depictions of horse and various livestock, including domesticated camels for the first time after their introduction into the region around 3,000 years ago.
Looking for a plethora of phases
The survey, conducted in two parts between June 2022 and November 2023, leveraged the expertise of local Bedouin guides to aid in the identification and location of selected sites throughout the Wadi Rum region, as well as around Little Petra in nearby Wadi Musa. Although many sites were known to associated local Bedouin communities, there were a small number of sites that were discovered for the first time, including several painted panels.
For the analysis of both engraved and painted panels, the survey team utilised the DStretch colour algorithm, a tool primarily employed to enhance and document colour pigments, facilitating more nuanced interpretation and classification of the artwork. Although DStretch is particularly effective at highlighting various hues of red, yellow, and black pigmentation (see CWA 116 and 124), this desk-based algorithm (which was also employed on mobile devices in the field) proved invaluable in enhancing the visibility of engravings on numerous open-air panels. The surfaces of these panels, often covered with a naturally formed dark patina resulting from iron oxide, were found to contrast sharply with the underlying light-coloured sandstone bedrock, allowing the algorithm to reveal previously obscured details. The use of DStretch not only clarified the artworks but also provided insights into the chronological phasing of the panels, including evidence of occasional superimposition.
The survey revealed a diverse array of rock-art panels, each exhibiting distinct chronological characteristics. As anticipated, the majority of the open-air panels were dominated by engravings, though several paintings were identified as well, predominantly in protected locations such as caves, rock shelters, and discrete inlets. To date, our team has identified four different sites with intact paintings. These comprise panels under a protected overhang near Little Petra, which contain clouds of red dots, traces of pigment on an overhang panel near Salma Camp, multiple layers of paintings and engravings inside a rock passage called Rizga Cave down near the border with Saudi Arabia, as well as a newly identified cave site – GG Cave – lying at the northern end of Wadi Rum and containing well-preserved red and underlying black painted imagery.
Rizga Cave is one of the most layered sites our team has ever seen in this region, containing easily six or seven different cultural layers of decoration, including at least three different shades of black and red paint, likely indicating different time periods, as well as engravings spanning from at least the Bronze Age down to modern times. The day spent at the site was insufficient to do more than a rapid survey, but its potential to help us unravel the history and prehistory of this region cannot be overstated. Image superimposition within Rizga Cave (and elsewhere) indicates that the painted images are generally the earliest, though precise dating remains elusive. In contrast, the engraved imagery appears stylistically consistent with a later prehistoric context, with depictions of animals and symbols that align with those typical of the Nabataean and Islamic periods. The presence of black pigment, possibly made from charcoal, opens the possibility of carbon dating this imagery, while pigment analysis can be undertaken on the red paint layers. This site has a lot of potential to provide fresh insights into the art-making traditions of the region.
Surprises just around the corner: GG Cave
We now turn to the most significant discovery of our survey: a series of painted panels located within GG Cave. This cave, situated at the northern edge of a large sandstone outcrop known as Jebel Al-Uthade, is accessed via a narrow inlet. The formation was introduced to the research team by our Bedouin guides, who possess extensive local knowledge of the area and knew of a large panel of open-air engravings on one face of the Jebel. However, this cave was surveyed for the first time by rock-art specialists as part of the current study. The cave entrance is accessed via several elevated rock platforms, and, on entry, faint rock-art imagery becomes immediately visible. This was our initial indication of the site’s significance. Several metres inside the cave, in a narrow gallery, four panels were discovered, all depicting faded warrior figures, many holding weaponry, particularly short bows. The pigments used on all of the panels were red haematite, likely locally sourced. These red pigments proved ideal for analysis using the DStretch algorithm, which enhanced the visibility of the images. Nearly all of the panels are visible from the entrance, and primarily depict male warriors, with occasional appearances of unfamiliar geometric forms.
A particularly complex and multi-phase panel was found deeper within the cave, facing the interior. This panel, which is not visible from the entrance, features a rare hunting scene, also executed in haematite, depicting a group of hunters and what appears to be a feline. Below this scene are figures of snakes and an ibex, as well as an Islamic-period prayer mat. The panel is notable for two distinct stylistic phases – Nabataean and Islamic – suggesting a temporal overlap. The rate of pigment absorption into the rock surface, coupled with the varying degrees of pigment fading, indicates that additions were made during the Nabataean phase. Furthermore, faded black figures, likely executed in charcoal or manganese, appear to lie under the red-painted figures, suggesting they were superimposed on an earlier painted panel. The rock surface on which the various painted figures were executed may have been in use for 6,000 to 7,000 years, representing at least three economic and religious phases: hunter-gatherer, warrior, and Islamic traditions. Due to the challenging lighting conditions at the time of the survey, the underlying theme of the earlier rock art could not be fully discerned. Beyond the gallery, the cave extends for at least another 7m into the sandstone outcrop. This area was briefly investigated, but a more detailed, systematic survey is necessary to understand fully the complexity of this assemblage of panels.
Future challenges
Our team has now identified several panels of engravings and paintings that appear to represent earlier rock-art traditions. These images are found at the cave sites of Rizga and GG, as well as on an engraved ibex panel associated with the 10,000-year-old Neolithic village of Al-Bayda near Little Petra. Combining evidence of erosion, animal subjects, adjacent stone-tool finds, and so on indicates that these images likely span all of the way from the Bronze Age back to the first villages of the Neolithic, and possibly even beyond to the earlier Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherer cultures of the region. While the analysis and interpretation of these art styles is ongoing, a longer cultural chronology for the region is now beginning to take shape.
In 2025, we will return to Wadi Rum to complete the initial phase of our survey. Our primary research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the rock-art chronologies within the region and their integration into broader archaeological sequences. Building on the findings of our most recent survey, we are also in the process of categorising potential new phases in the development of rock art. These research questions will be more effectively addressed once we obtain permission to conduct, with our Jordanian partners, a scientific analysis of the pigments and any calcite deposits overlying the engraved or painted rock art. Such analyses will provide the team with robust, dated chronologies and geochemical profiles, which will enhance our ability to identify specific pigment recipes and refine our understanding of the technological and cultural processes behind the creation of these enigmatic artworks.
FURTHER INFORMATION: The YouTube channel @PaleoGenevieve hosts a series of field videos exploring this survey project: visit https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiW5g_5IciZDwai3L7njM5nPB9vL3mMzt&si=fsn5WykbrowaXUH5. There is more at http://www.jordansmosaic.com.
All Images: courtesy of Genevieve von Petzinger and George Nash
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