Paper short abstract:

This paper examines associations between frozen woolly mammoths and refrigeration technology. Precisely how permafrost prevented the decomposition of soft tissues for thousands of years was a primary point of investigation, and the Arctic was described as a natural refrigerator.

Paper long abstract:

Connections between permafrost-preserved woolly mammoths and refrigeration technology began in the 1850s and persisted into the 1950s. As steam-powered refrigerators were developed in Great Britain circa 1850, popular discourse habitually recalled the first frozen mammoth collected from Siberia in 1806 as a way of explaining to British audiences the freezing process and its impact on animal bodies. This mammoth, these narratives claimed, demonstrated how the frozen Arctic ground preserved the mammoth's body for thousands of years--just as artificial refrigerators preserved the flesh of recently slaughtered sheep and cattle for human consumption. Thus naturalizing the novel technology, the Siberian mammoth was made to assuage consumer anxiety around frozen meat. When, in 1943, gold miners unearthed the head, trunk, and foreleg of a baby mammoth, the American Museum of Natural History solidified the association between artificial refrigeration and permafrost mammoths in text and on display. The diorama surrounding the display of the animal, and an article accompanying it in Natural History were both entitled “Nature’s Deep Freeze.” The mammoth itself was presented to the public inside a replica of a mid-20th-century home freezer, while the Natural History article elaborated the longstanding analogy of the Arctic as a natural refrigerator.