Since ancient times in the far north of Asia, herds of wild reindeer have made annual meridional seasonal migrations.According to archaeozoology, large ungulates (reindeer and elk) were the main food species for the indigenous peoples of Northern Siberia.Plentiful food resources and a lack of raw materials for hunting tools led to the formation of a newly developed system of collective hunting based on seasonal migration, landscapes, and biocenosis.This paper covers several methods of collective hunting known from archaeology and ethnography, collected by the authors during investigations in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the north of the West Siberian Plain.Trap-pit systems, which are being found nowadays in large quantities, are the result of collective efforts that led to the evolution of more complex ancient social structures.Collective work, even in the appropriating forms of the economy, was more effective than the outcomes of individual hunting.An indirect confirmation of the development of the social structure of hunters and gatherers in the north of Western Siberia is the number of settlements and dwellings functioning there, which reached their peak in the Middle Ages, following which they started to decline with the emergence of individual hunting.
Kardash et al. (Mon,) studied this question.