This is a collection of previously unpublished reports on expeditions by Sch. to Dagestan, organized in 1944, 1945 and 1946 at the Institute of Ethnography of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. and the Faculty of History of the Moscow State University. The reports are supplemented with an article by Sch.: ‘The Fine Art of the Peoples of Mountainous Dagestan’, dedicated to the analysis of the Dagestan ornament. The reports illustrate the activities of Sch. as a universal ethnographer, in whose field of vision was both the material and the spiritual culture of the peoples of Dagestan. Reports indicate that during the expeditions; his materials reflected the history of the penetration of Christianity into Dagestan, its subsequent displacement with Islam and preservation of survivals of pre-Muslim beliefs. The latter ones quite clearly revealed themselves in rituals connected with the spring equinox and the harvest festival. The reports also contain data that supplement the materials of earlier expeditions and related to the cult of sacred trees, the spring festivities, the symbolism of the ornament (particularly, the cross). There are records of variants of wedding rituals, information about the delivery and funeral rites.