Abstract
The large community ice cellar designs in eastern Chukotka are unique within the Arctic due to the mixed influences from the indigenous Chukchi people and western industry. Community ice cellars here were designed and constructed in the 1950s-60s to accommodate both food stores for local indigenous residents and feed stores for Arctic fox fur farms. Like much of the Arctic, this region is undergoing unprecedented climate change. Air temperatures within the study area have been increasing at an average rate of 0.7°C per decade since the 1950s. Exacerbating the adverse effects of the warming climate is the lack of ice cellar maintenance in communities where the fur industry did not survive the transition to a market economy. Today, all but two community ice cellars in eastern Chukotka have flooded or collapsed. Presented in this work are thermal records from two cellars in the region that allow for both climatic and anthropogenic influences on the cellars’ structural integrity to be evaluated. Particularly effective ice cellar maintenance practices utilized in the community of Lorino were 1) wintertime ventilation, and 2) placing large blocks of river ice in the cellar in spring to mitigate spring and summer warming.
Highlights
Ice cellars (Russian «lédnik», Chukchi «K’aetyran») are a form of Arctic indigenous technology in which tunnels and/or chambers are excavated into permafrost and used as passive cold food storage
The large community ice cellar designs in eastern Chukotka are unique within the Arctic due to the mixed influences from the indigenous Chukchi people and western industry
Effective ice cellar maintenance practices utilized in the community of Lorino were 1) wintertime ventilation, and 2) placing large blocks of river ice in the cellar in spring to mitigate spring and summer warming
Summary
Ice cellars (Russian «lédnik», Chukchi «K’aetyran») are a form of Arctic indigenous technology in which tunnels and/or chambers are excavated into permafrost and used as passive cold food storage. Ice cellars are widespread and can be found in many Eurasian and North American highlatitude settlements (e.g., Yoshikawa et al 2016; Nyland et al 2017). Ice cellars as an indigenous technology date back at least one millennium in the Bering Sea region. Whale meat from an abandoned cellar in Gambell, Alaska, roughly km due south of our study area, was radiocarbon dated and likely killed and buried approximately 1000 years ago (George et al 2008). Traditional cellars, like the ancient one discovered in Gambell, range in size from small field cashes (approximately 1 m3) to personal or family cellars (approximately 10 m3), and are still common in Yakutia (Yoshikawa et al 2016) and northern Alaska (Nyland et al 2017). Less common are community ice cellars with multiple chambers. The community ice cellar, or ice house, in Tuktoyaktuk, Canada built in the late-1960s with government funding, features three corridors with
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