Many ways to see yams: An ecological analysis of Yam Figures in the Aboriginal rock art of Balanggarra Country, Northeast Kimberley, Western Australia

The well-known importance of yams and other tubers in forager-hunter cultures sits in contrast with the many issues posed by their organic and biodegradable nature, and presents a persistent conundrum when attempting to assess their significance in the archaeological record. This chapter explores the entanglements through a case study of human-yam motifs, or Yam Figures, in the rock art of Balanggarra Country, northeast Kimberley, to examine the ways rock art can inform on multispecies dimensions of forager lifeworlds. As one of a host of other-than-agriculture Indigenous environmental practices, ecoscaping is a meshwork of recursive human-plant relationships; it involves knowledge and practice surrounding the location and usage of waterways, landscape formations, and floral and faunal communities. The assemblage of known locations of plant resources is referred to as an ecoscape, and in reference to yams, yamscape.