Dear Richard,

Professor Jos Schaeken, who leads the international team of researchers studying
these birchbark documents, has written such a preliminary discussion in Dutch:

Schaeken, Jos, 2012. Stemmen op berkenbast. Berichten uit middeleeuws Rusland:
Dagelijks leven en communicatie. Leiden: Leiden University Press. 176 pp.
e-ISBN 978-94-0060-086-7.

This is freely downloadable as an open access book at the address
given by Professor Schaeken on his website, where the leaders of the
international team are also mentioned: http://www.schaeken.nl/lu/research/index.htm

Best regards, Asko Parpola

Quoting Richard Salomon <rsalomon@u.washington.edu>:

Does anyone know of any good scholarly discussions of the Novgorod documents? They sound like the same sort of thing as the Vindolanda (Yorkshire) letters, which present fascinating slices of ordinary life back in the day. Nothing comparable from the ancient Indian world, unfortunately, although the Niya Kharosthi documents are somewhat close.

Rich Salomon

On 10/20/2014 5:56 AM, Stefan Baums wrote:

Dear Dominik and Matthew,

yes, plenty of birch in Russia. And the letters are incised
in the bark. Here two photos where that is more clearly
visible:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#mediaviewer/File:Beresta.jpg
   http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/Novgorodwoodp.html (scroll down)

It am not sure whether ink was rubbed into the incisions
(palm‐leaf style), but this may have been unnecessary since
the incision made the darker lower bark visible through the
light outer layer.

All best,
Stefan

--
----------------------

Richard Salomon
Department of Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington, Box 353521
Seattle WA 98195-3521
USA


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