The article is the first in the series of four that present the results of a study on environmental contaminants in coastal Chukotka, conducted in the context of a multi-disciplinary investigation of indigenous foodways in the region of the Bering Strait. We provide an overview of the contemporary foodways in our study region and present the results of the survey on the consumption of locally harvested foods, carried out in 2016 in the Chukotkan communities of Enmelen, Nunligran, and Sireniki. The present results are evaluated in comparison to those of the analyses carried out in 2001–2002 in the village of Uelen, located further north. Where appropriate, we also draw comparative insight from the Alaskan side of the Bering Strait. The article sets the stage for the analyses of legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and metals to which the residents become exposed through diet and other practices embedded in the local foodways, and for the discussion of the Recommended Food Daily Intake Limits (RFDILs) of the food that has been sampled and analyzed in the current study.

Situated in the Bering Strait region of Russia and Alaska, the ethnographic documentation presented here elucidates the role of the olfactory aesthetic in shaping human attitudes toward food. The focus is on the practices connected with the use of marine mammal products and recipes prepared by means of aging and fermentation. Since recent times, the olfactory responses to these historically important foods have been changing to where their smell is becoming undesirable on the whole and particularly unacceptable in certain social contexts. The present attitudes range from genuine fondness to an array of aversions. For many contemporary consumers, the social implications of the smells associated with consumption of aged foods and marine mammal products pose a daily concern, which they address in part through extensive washing and laundering. The featured ethnohistorical reconstruction captures the story of Soviet-era near annihilation of certain products and recipes in Chukotka, followed by a partial revitalization in the post-Soviet period. Examples of the gustatory, olfactory, and social experiences connected with food on both sides of the Bering Strait are offered. Cumulatively, these experiences speak of the extent to which foodways and food security are shaped by the realm of senses.Had Claude Levi-Strauss (1978) devised his culinary triangles in an ethnographic setting circa the Bering Strait, a tricky qualifier called "tastily rotten" would need to find its place amid the "raw," "rotten," and "cooked." The "tastily rotten," lovingly called so by the connoisseurs, is a fragrant array of locally harvested animals, fish, and plants that have been provided with an environment in which they "rot" into a desired condition. The biography of this food is connected with the

The article is the last in the series of four that present the results of a study on environmental contaminants in coastal Chukotka, conducted in the context of a multi-disciplinary investigation of Indigenous foodways in the region. The article presents the Recommended Food Daily Intake Limit (RFDIL) guidelines of the locally harvested foods in coastal Chukotka. The guidelines were developed based on the results of the analysis of the legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and metals found in the samples of locally harvested food, which was collected in 2016 in the villages of Enmelen, Nunligran, and Sireniki on the south coast of the Chukchi Peninsula, Russian Arctic. The overall aim of the article is to expand the toolset for dealing with the challenges of: (1) setting the dietary recommendations when we assess multiple contaminants in a variety of foods (and our method of RFDILs calculation is an example of a possible approach), and (2) managing the real-life circumstances when many types of foods are mixed in many dishes regularly and the concentrations of contaminants in these mixed dishes become uncertain. Drawing on perspectives from the fields of environmental health sciences, humanities, social sciences, and visual art, the authors consider the RFDILs of the examined foods in the context of the culinary practices and aesthetics values (those that relate to the culturally held ideas of beauty ascribed to a dish or the processes of its preparation and consumption) of the Indigenous Arctic cuisine in the region of the Bering Strait, and in the broader dynamics of food and culture.

Ethnomycology is concerned with the roles of fungi in the human social experience. An inherently multidisciplinary field, it reaches into myriad cultural domains and crosses interests in the humanities, fine arts, and social and natural sciences. Ethnomycology's early ties to cultural anthropology are in great part connected to the history of exchanges, from the 1950s to the 1980s, between Claude Lévi‐Strauss and R. Gordon Wasson. Since then, the growing body of research on the behaviors, uses, cultural transitions, and social relationships related to fungi has unearthed a great variety of ideas pertaining to human–fungi engagements.

Drawing on ethnographic field research in Chukotka, Russia, this article explores ideas and practices connected with the Arctic tundra vegetation that speak to its place in Chukchi spirituality and cultural milieu. The ethnographic focus is on a Chukchi remembrance ceremony with other social contexts of human–plant interaction offered as comparative examples. Contributing novel insight for the considerations of sentient landscapes and ceremonial engagements with plants, the article turns to the Chukchi eco-spiritual relationships in the beyond-the-human world. It suggests that the vegetation cover is not merely an assemblage of fungi and plants, but an organismal membrane through which the tundra communicates and acts, while also facilitating integrations between the human and beyond-the-human worlds.