Novgorod!

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

For some historians this is old news, but it's news to me. These remarkable birch scrolls have been excavated for years, and they are well known to many people in Russia, scholars and also members of the general public. Everyday life recorded by everyday people! 

Are these birch scrolls books? Is a shopping list a book? Why does it matter if we give an embodied text the name "book"? Does it not matter? 

Here's the article from The New York Times: Where Mud is Archaeological Gold, Russian History Grew on Trees