The following is my translation of an article called: Interessante Funde menschlicher Siedlungen in Kondagebiete Nordwest-Sibiriens von E. Freiherr v. Kapherr. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1921, Heft 5, Seiten 116-120.
Surprising as it may seem, my knowledge of the various peoples of Northwest Siberia isn't exactly encyclopaedic, and I'm not aware of appropriate English terminology in all cases. This could lead to some howlers. As is typical for my ill-spirited approach to old Kosmos translations, the wonderful illustrations aren't available here. That makes the helpful diagrams somewhat less useful than in the original version.
I'm not aware of any previous translations.
Trevor Dykes.

Interesting discoveries of human settlements in the Kondia regions of Northwest Siberia by E. Freiherr v. Kapherr
During my long journey through Western Siberia I discovered remains of human settlements from various ages, and these will certainly not only be of interest to experts. Unfortunately, I am only a layman when it comes to matters of ethnography, so I must not attempt to draw conclusions from these finds. I must rather limit myself, aided by the sketches that I made from memory, to describing these discoveries as reliably as possible. I am aware of the deficiencies of this work, and greatly regret that I have been unable to return to these districts since the year 1913, as was forced upon me by a severe illness contracted in the wilderness, and I had to return to Germany. The war placed an insurmountable barrier against any further exploration.
The region in which my discoveries are collected is an enormous area of forest to the north of the limits of agriculture (the most northerly border for oats and rye is about Demyansk on the Irtysh), and it extends between the Urals and Ob, and further to the east across the greatest part of Siberia. A more detailed list of locations: the river area of the Konda, a tributary river to the left of the Irtysh of about the size of the Elba, and the neighbouring rivers Marda and Zepusch, Tawa and Baltschara (at the parish of the same name).
Only a few human settlements are found in this region. From Repalowo, a Russian village where the Konda meets the Irtysch, one travels a day by boat to reach the nearest fishing village along the Konda. A further day's journey upstream is a fishing village which is only habitable during the summer, 38 werft (1 werft = 1.067km) further upstream, to the mouth of the Marda, one finds the small village of Sigli, and yet further upstream, on the mouth of the Tawa, is the village of Bogdanow and the parish of Baltschara and, with each distanced by about a day's upstream travel, the yurts of Pustine, Nachratschi Tschesnaka and Jessaula. A few more small fishing settlements are at the tributary with the Kuma and in the source area of the Konda. Many of the huts and yurts are only inhabited during the summer.
Only a small number of the residents are Russian traders, teachers and farmers. The only public official is the Community Recorder (Gemeindeschreiber) at Baltschara. The rest of the population is composed of Volgain (Wogul) and Khanty (Ostjaken) fishermen, an assemblage of a total of 2 - 300 souls in all from a mixture of southern Khanty and Volgain. The language is a Volgaic-Khanty one, a very pretty sounding language. The people name themselves 'East Yaks' (Ostjaken).-
Agriculture is not practiced at all but the ground is nevertheless very fertile. It consists of a sometimes flooded, grey-black mud, and is transversed by sandy crests and hills upon which mostly firs grow. In the depths are large meadows, especially on the river banks, broad leaf woods and bogs, almost high, transitional and grassed bogs with peat deposits in some areas (Schigir), or with reed growth (Ousachara) and shadowy forest (Stjershinka). Horses are almost unknown, and have only recently been kept in some numbers at Baltschara and Pustinje, cattle and pigs serve as domestic animals. A small part of the people practice hunting for fur professionally, while the majority feed themselves from the very generous quantities of fish.
The ethnicity of the population is similar to the Sino-Tartar, but with finer limbs and smaller stature: typically round skulls with slanted eyes and dark black hair.
Earlier, this land was the bed of the former lake Ob, but only flood land during the Diluvian and Alluvian times. There are no rocks, and minerals first appear in the distant Urals. The land is characterised by the many discoveries of mammoths. Wild animals, such as bears, elk, reindeer, foxes, lynx, otters, martens, Kalanok martens, squirrels, Siberian chipmunks and Ob lemmings are common.- Reindeer are not kept as domestic animals, but they appear to have sometimes served as such during earlier times. The more northerly Khanty of the Soßwa region also do not keep reindeer, the raising of which is first encouraged yet further to the north of the tree border.
The religion of the people is mostly 'Christian' -ie. Greek Orthodox. But they still like to pray to their old gods, which are much the same as for the shamanistic Khanty. One can still find sacrificial and prayer huts (Trumchar) today all over the forest, mostly small log shacks decorated with coloured bands, copper coins, small spears made from reindeer and bear skulls.- So much for the description of the land and its present day residents.
Far away from all present settlements, in the middle of the forest where, today, at most a lonely hunter might pass, one can find, on the heaths, higher hills, mostly near to river courses, traces of a primitive culture. Of the modern villages, only Baltschara has such a site near to its immediate position.
The Khanty, whom I asked about these places, called the settlements villages of the Schuti, the forest people, an extinct folk. The Russians knew absolutely nothing, even the educated in Toboski and Jakaterinburg. I found nothing that was relevant in either the museum at Jakaterinburg or the one in Toboski.
The traces of these old settlements consist of circular trenches that may have been really deep, and these are next to dykes which perhaps bore a wooden structure, and had certainly been built for protection against predators and enemies. On our layout sketch 1, I have drawn in the position (represented by crosses) of the settlements discovered by myself and Duke Dshasaridse on the Konda, Marda, Tawa, Zepusch, Nera, Newa and Ogutjechhg- The diagram, 2, next to it, shows the arrangement of the trenches (dotted lines).- The strokes represent pit locations found beyond the former settlements.
I have searched the ground of the trenches and ditches in many places, and found the following objects: pottery shards, mostly strongly blackened by smoke (showing that the round pots had been used for cooking) and shattered. The pits, therefore, were depositories for rubbish as similarly for the Kökkenmöddinger (midden deposits).
The clay vessels appear to the eye to have been produced on a potter's wheel. They carry (see Ill. 3) various ornamentations, etched in designs: mostly simple straight lines with small, round impressions or balls between them, but also sometimes in the form of a Roman II, and even a Z figure that is reminiscent of the vertical part of a swastika (Hakenkreuz). These vessels were of various sizes, but otherwise all look much the same whether they may have had a diameter of about 30 or only 10cm, there is always the same round shape (see above left).
In the trenches could also be found charcoal and burned clumps, the unburned parts of which had naturally moulded and disappeared long ago. Furthermore: bones and bits of antler from reindeer, bear bones, a molar and canine of a bear, the humerus, ulna, tibia and a number from a horse. No remains of cattle. No iron, no other metal -apart from a ring of bronze (s. Ill. 4), but that lay on the surface and appears to belong to a later age. The ring may well have been lost by some Khanty fisherman or hunter, then the ridges of the heaths are still today favoured places to spend the night. It has the style of a sealing ring, its plate carries a letter reminiscent of Tartar writing. What is remarkable is that this ring is not oxidised. I showed it to three mullahs. They could not identify this symbol, and did not recognise any Tartar origin. In my opinion, the ring does not belong to the Schuti, whose pottery shards and discarded bones we found deeper in the trenches. The trench itself was partly filled with sand that had fallen in, and partly covered by rotting pieces of wood and moss. Different settlements were built with differing layouts, sometimes nearly round, sometimes elongated, but they always fitted with the shape of the land. The bones were almost always fragmented and blackened with humus. They clearly showed signs of slaughter, and their content had been plundered. Dshafaridse found a split shoulder bone and the upper thigh bone of a horse at a settlement on the Tawa, both burned, and also bird bones -apparently from Wood grouse and ducks.
The largest diameters occur with the settlements on the Tawam the Zepusch and near Baltschara. With a circumference of 200 metres, they have the appearance of real villages. The Tawa settlement, the largest, has 36 trenches and about 45 pits.
On average, all trenches are about ten to twelve metres from one another, but up to 20 metres in a few settlements. They are round and have a diameter of 4 to 5 metres. The smallest trenches (about 3-4 metres) I found at Baltschara, and the largest (4-5 metres and more) on the Nera.- The smallest village was on the Nera, and it was divided into three parts, each with its own circular pits. This village had few trenches (see Ill. 2), and it appears to have been ruled by one chieftain: Apart from a somewhat larger trench at the mouth of the Nera, where it meets the Morda, there was only a single 'Chieftain's trench' in the village above. I found such 'chieftain's trenches' in each of the other settlements. It always lies in the middle of the village, and has a diameter of 6-8 metres. Along its bank, as with the other trenches, it has a low dyke.
The largest dwelling trench ('chieftain's trench' -as I presume) only differs by its greater depth and larger circumference from the other, smaller dwelling trenches. I have tried to reconstruct such a dwelling trench in a picture, and I used an image based upon the yurts of the Northeastern Jaken, whose tschum (there generally consisting of reindeer furs on posts) has a pointed, circular shape. But on the Soßwa and Ob one sees pointed, circular Khanty tschums of wood which have no trenches.
I assume that the pointed wooden tent on the edge of the banks of the trench was constructed to surround it. A cooking fire would have been found in the middle of the trench (as is also the case in the huts of the Khanty and Samojeden), and the family sat around it. No shards were found in a residence trench, and also no bones, but there was coal about 30cm down, remains of a fire. Also spread around the trench was rotted tree bark, and this showed where the posts had been (s. Ill. 5). The core had gone. This discovery strengthened the assumption of Dshasaridse and myself, that a wooden roof had once stood above these trenches formed into a dome, similar in shape to the construction of a charcoal burner. This can naturally here not have been for charcoal -the charcoal would have found no purchaser. (The nearest town, Tobolsk, is 700 werft away.)
The graves are always beyond the trenches, and always (with the exception of Baltschara) on the slope to the river. At Baltschara, the slope goes landwards to a marshy dell which could, perhaps, formerly have been a lagoon.
The graves are always arranged in rows -mostly 4-5 in a row, but up to 9 at Baltaschara and as many as 14 on the Tawa (s. Ill. 6). They appear to mostly lie in a north-south alignment, and consist of narrow, shallow (only about 80cm deep) excavations which, earlier, as shown by traces of wood, were covered with timbers. They contain bones arranged in a lain out (rather than crouching) position. I only found bones of adults. I excavated six graves: one grave of, judging by the bones, a very young girl, a grave of an old woman and four graves of men. Men and women were next to each other -and this is completely contradictory to the customs of the Islamic Tartars and the shamistic Khanty. They hold the woman to be "impure", and she may never be buried with men.
The bones were very fragile and, as roots had grown around them, difficult to exhume. I had no clay with me and was unable to obtain any. Unfortunately, they soon disintegrated after drying out. Remarkably, two bear teeth were found in one grave and, in another, a piece of reindeer antler and a number of molars from a horse.
I excavated the grave of the girl at Zierat (near Baltschara): Two pieces of jewellery, crudely smelted from grey-white unoxidised metal (raw silver?) as shown in number 2 of Ill. 4. One item is still in my possession, whereas the other is in the collection of the editor, Wilhelm Scheuermann, along with various pottery shards. The one that finds itself with Scheuermann has no hole, and is better moulded than the piece illustrated here. In any case, the items made with small holes were ear rings. The skull of the girl was fairly round, the long, very plentiful hair was strawberry blonde but without sheen.
In the grave of the woman, whose hair was black-red with traces of grey and whose head was very round, was found the necklace of greened copper-bronze, no. 4. As the illustration shows, it is a beautiful, artistic piece. In the same grave we found the ear (?) ring no. 3 (unfortunately only partial -we did not discover the rest as we had to excavate at night, as the natives do not like to see the Schuti -whose spirits they fear- being disturbed from their repose!), and it is made from the same metal as item no. 2. Not oxidised, a fine, artistic piece.- As one sees, it was moulded in the same manner. Incidentally, the metal is so hard that it can hardly be scratched with a knife.
In one of the graves of a man, which otherwise contained nothing apart from bones, I found the jewellery item no. 1 of silver, fine work, and also a knife stud. The work is much more beautiful and finer than for the other decorative objects, light, thin and well finished.
One male skull was exceptionally round, while the other showed signs of the elongated form.- The hair was black on all but one, who must have had nearly brown-yellow hair. Hand and foot bones appear to indicate small, gracile limbs. I could never measure the body length as the bones did not lie in their correct order. Nevertheless, the people seem to have been of an average size.
Pottery shards were not found in the graves. The bear teeth were in one of the male graves. Unfortunately, most of the shards got lost. A few, as said, are in the possession of Herr W Scheuermann, as I presented them to him for his collection.
So much for my "Schuti".- What were these for people, where did they come from, where did they go, and during which age did they live? They certainly had no connections with the Khanty-Wogul population. Was a branch of the ancient Awaren settled here? Or is it perhaps an entirely vanished folk? What is remarkable, is that today, among the Syrjanen and Khanty, one now and then sees blonde people! People of impressive size and with blue eyes. My finds have nothing in common with the "Kurganen" from the borders of the steppes: that can be seen by a layman. So who were these "Schuti"?
Today, forest grows over settlements of ancient, primitive cultures. Nobody can provide information about the dead -not even the Scheitan of the Siberian taiga... forgotten, vanished...
Translator's note
Somewhat confusingly (to me), the author uses the word Graben for two different forms of hole; graves and rubbish pits. At least, judging from my limited acquaintanceship with cemeteries, I assume these were different holes. In most cultures, people don't generally bung their household refuge in with their dead relatives. Of course, in Vulgaria...
As mentioned above (should you have missed it), I'm not familiar with various names of peoples or geography, and have frequently left them in the German used. Should anybody know of appropriate English equivalents, then please feel free to educate me.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.