These are all people who live in the remote northern regions of the Russian Federation.
These people are reindeer pastoralists. However, they are not the only ones. Different groups in European Russia, Scandinavia, and Finland herd the antlered stock.
Different cultures in North America have also relied upon the reindeer, but these animals, which we call caribou, are all wild creatures.
As usual, their dogs are invisible. If there hadn’t been a carving of dogs pulling a sled, you’d never know these peoples had dogs, despite the fact that in the traditional culture, the dogs were very important.
During the Communist period, many of the indigenous people had their dogs “improved” by the Soviets who killed or destroyed the native dogs and brought in Russian dogs (mostly Liaka types) for political reasons. Old photographs and whatever remains one may find archeologically may be the main clue as to what the original dogs were like. Unfortunately, in most cases, canines are pretty much ignored, both in early encounters and to this day. I remember reading one National Geographic article on herding peoples of India in which their essential dogs only were in one photograph, in the background. The article didn’t even bother to mention them.
Peggy Richter.
In Finland, few part of wooden sledges have been found in swamps and marshes. The oldest of the kind is 9000 old (!) and is seemingly the world’s oldest sledge “leg”. It is in the coat of arms in this town, where it was found in 1934:
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinolan_maalaiskunta
This kind of sledge was probably pulled by dogs.