Opisanie sibirskikh kurganov i drevnostei [Description of Siberian Burial Mounds and Antiquities]
[Journeys through western Siberia and the Altai in 1878 and 1880]. Moscow [1883]
First edition 4to, pp.(181)-205, 7 lithographic plates. Text in Russian. An extract from volume 9, parts 2-3 of Antiquities, the Works of the Moscow Archeological Society. Bound in twentieth-century maroon cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Bookplate of A.I. Ward.
An interesting and early archaeological essay on the Western-Siberian burial mounds. The author describes the features, disposition and structure of the mounds and the main finds - stone, iron and copper items. The plates depict the mounds and found antiquities quite accurately and not without artistic inspiration. Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev was a Russian explorer, archaeologist, and turkologist. His discoveries include the Orkhon script, Genghis Khan's capital Karakorum and Ordu-Baliq, the capital of the Uyghur Khaganate. He was also one of the founding fathers of Siberian separatism. Under contract to the Russian Geographical Society, he traveled twice across Siberia and the Altai, researching the economy and geography, archaeology and ethnography, anthropology and linguistics. During his travels across the Altai in 1878-1880, Yadrintsev collected data about kurgans, fortresses and other archaeological monuments, recorded legends about some of them, produced sketches of many archaeological finds. These materials were published by the Moscow Archaeological Society. For the results of his scientific travel, Yadrintsev was awarded with a Gold medal of Russian Geographical Society.