Berestology

Using certain inscriptions found in the area, the documents pertaining to the affairs of one of the hereditary ruling dynasties of Novgorod, he constructed an entire detective story, entertaining the reader and acquainting him with many questions of the new science of berestology.

A relatively new field of research in Old Russian linguistics is berestology, the study of the numerous birchbark documents from Novgorod and other medieval Russian towns. In the Netherlands, two scholars have recently published articles on berestology and related issues: [...]

This is an unusual book in several aspects. Firstly, it presents a synthesis of current knowledge about the written heritage of early Rus in many fields, palaeography (in its restricted meaning, concentrating on what the author calls "parchment literacy", p. 22), berestology (I may be forgiven for coining this term to designate the study of birch-bark documents), diplomatics, numismatics, and sphragistics, not to forget occasional forays into the history of art and archeology proper.

A telling example of the fruitful interaction between berestology and epigraphy is N1000, which was already cited at the beginning of this paper. The name of one of the senders of the letter, Kyas, appears to be of Turkic rather than Slavic origin [...].

The abovementioned research marks the start of a new research area in berestology. The most tangible result is that more accurate interpretations of individual texts have been given, thanks to the discovery of (hidden) communicative heterogeneity.

In Russia, the study of birchbark letters is sometimes known informally as berestologija (‘berestology’), derived from the word beresta ‘birchbark’. For many years, ‘berestology’ has been an interdisciplinary research venture that engages archaeologists, philologists, linguists, and historians.