gh BRIGANDAGE ON THE SPITSBERGEN

Eleven skulls from the burials (dating back to the end of the 18th century) were delivered by the Moscow archaeologists for examination to Victor Zvyagin, Doctor of Medicine, Institute of Forensic Medical Examination. According to his report, four skulls had traces of violent death, this fact confirming historians' testimony on the dismal end of coast-dwellers' trade on the Spitsbergen.

All the examined bones belong to the field men who arrived at the Spitsbergen to hunt walruses. Archaeologists excavated them from tumbledown burials all over the island in the vicinity of temporary settlements of the people who lived there the end of the 18th century. All four killed persons are men. The conclusion made by the doctor is surprisingly accurate: one of the killed had the skull fractured by a head of an ax, another one had a deep stab and incised wound, the third man had part of the face slashed off, and the fourth one was hacked to death when he was asleep. No doubt, such wounds were fatal.

The results of the forensic medical examination amazed the archaeologists who had carried out the excavation on the Spitsbergen for more than twenty years and so far had found no evidence of brigandage among coast-dwellers', they only knew about such cases from published natives' interviews. The above medical facts revealed a terrible picture of the decline of this northern trade at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

In the old days, hunting used to be very profitable on the Spitsbergen - the walrus tusk and blubber were expensive. Russian coast-dweller family cooperatives used to arrive at the island and stay there for a season, and then they returned to the mainland for trading. The life in the field men's settlements went on evenly, in compliance with the order established years before, the surrounding people were reliable relatives strictly observing the Orthodox customs. When ivory and oil started to arrive from the South to the European market, coast-dwellers' trade went into a recession - the trade did not bring good revenues any longer.

To save the situation, masters of the cooperatives hired incidental people, often exiled convicts, who were in abundance in the North. According to the natives, there were groups of people who particularly arrived at the Spitsbergen to rob the field men. Brigandage cases were quite frequent on the island, the coast-dwellers' work became dangerous, and by the middle of the 19th century the traditional coast-dwellers' trade came to an end.

All over the island, in the settlements with large warm houses, where the coast-dwellers used to live and even to spend winter with their families, and also in temporary settlements, the archeologists find abundance of seaside hunters' instruments quite suitable for murder: axes, knives, boat-hooks, tips of lances, bear-spears. The coast-dwellers also had guns (lead bullets and flint were found). According to Pavel Chernosvitov, a participant of the archeological dig, the historians have at their disposal all necessary archeological data about coast-dwellers' culture: the way it commenced, developed and expired. By now, the historians have a clear view on this original variety of the Russian culture.

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