Study of Russian accounting documents on birch bark from the eleventh to the fifteenth century using the digital archive

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of documents on birch bark – unique monuments of Russian written culture, the research of which is currently ensured by the digital database, ‘Old Russian documents on birch bark’. Birch bark documents were widely used in accounting practice in Russia in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. They combine the characteristics of paperless and written sources and occupy an intermediate position between tally sticks, wooden rods, runic inscriptions and ledgers. The currently accessible documents on birch bark were studied using quantitative methods and tools of the digital database of birch bark documents and the national corpus of the Russian language. In this way, it was possible to identify the main techniques and methods of organisation of accounting in Old Rus’ and types of accounting records on birch bark, as well as the continuity of such organisation of accounting in Russian accounting practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.