Documentation of the Upper Indus Petroglyphs and Inscriptions project was commissioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and is Led by Professor Jason Neelis from Wilfrid Laurier University Canada’s History Department. This project is a joint venture between Wilfrid Laurier University Canada, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) Pakistan, and Sydney University Australia.

Under this project, I am documenting petroglyphs and inscriptions in the flood zone of Diamer Bhasha Dam which is under construction in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan province, in the northern areas of Pakistan. The petroglyphs and inscriptions in this region date back as far as 10,000 BC and exhibit the footprints of many civilizations, religions, and a very diverse group of travelers down the history road. I am applying multilayered 3D technologies via Terrestrial Laser Scanning, 3D Photogrammetry, and panoramic virtual tours using standard DSLR cameras to document these talking rocks.

The data that we have collected so far is available on several online platforms including the LUMS’ digital heritage platform http://heritage360.pk/Diamer/Diamer.html which showcases a selective collection of 3D models of rocks, 2D virtual tours of some sites, and video animations of some of the sites we have documented till now. A large collection of 3D models, around 2500 and counting, are available on Sketchfab which is a well-known platform to showcase 3D assets at https://sketchfab.com/cvlablums/collections.

HeiDICON platform of Heidelberg Academy Germany has also published IIIF-enabled images from over 100 rocks at https://heidicon.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/search?p=520.

We are working on an online platform as well which will be solely designated for this project and will exhibit data in different forms and contexts.