ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the transformations in the practices of gathering and technologies of cooking and preserving food used by the reindeer herders of Chukotka in the second half of the 20th to the early 21st centuries. The text begins with an analysis of how local people employ refrigerators, sugar, and salt in food conservation in the village of Amguema and in the Amguema tundra in Iul’tinskii raion. The appearance and distribution of these material objects led to a change in both the technology of cooking and the composition of products gathered in the tundra. In this regard, the author first focuses on food processing and then moves on to discuss gathering practices in the tundra. The chapter examines how these changes, which are rapid, significant, visual, and lived by the people on a daily basis during the mealtime, are reflected upon by the local people, and which role food memory plays in the lives. The author argues that preparation and consumption of authentic Chukchi food, as well as the activities unfolding in tundra, allow local people to weave one part of their experience (in tundra and yaranga) into daily life in apartment houses and cottages, and thereby to adapt to spatial displacement caused by their staying in the village.
