Prolegomena do studiów nad gramotami brzozowymi

The article looks in some detail at the question of letters written on birchbark even as it presents some the basic research issues involving birchbark manuscripts (“gramota”) in general, including the first mentions of this form in the written sources in the Kitāb al-Fihrist and the socalled Questions of Kiryk. The author draws attention to the complex nature of the processes of reading, analyzing, interpreting and translating texts written on birchbark, which are literature on one hand, but archaeological sources on the other. Gramota are products of human activity, and the signs engraved on them contain information passed on in an act of communication. The author compares the significance of manuscripts on birchbark with that of narrative sources, noting the inestimable value of the former. Gramotas are to his view a kind of source material well suited to interdisciplinary studies.