Click image above to see a panorama of a typical landscape view, showing the steep hamada escarpment and the rocky promontories which jut out into the wadi. This also shows the irrigated area of the wadi and the Ubari sand sea defining the northern edge of the wadi, with a prominent foggara in the foreground below the edge of the escarpment. The rock-art is concentrated around the ends of promontories such as this one. The spatial patterning of the images relative to these obvious, visually imposing features suggests that these features held specific cultural significance and meaning. At these sites, engravings representing several thousand years of human activity cluster together. Some of these are shown on this page. Repetitive use of these locations for several thousand years suggests that their significance was recognised, respected and perpetuated through time. The ends of the promontories are also the location of palaeosprings which were active at various times during the Holocene. Access to water sources in the wadi would have been critical, especially during phases of increasing aridity, and active springs would have provided the major source of water at these times. Constrained water resources are likely to have been competed for during these arid phases, with visual symbolism providing a means for territorial display and demarcation.