Overview
- The pocket notebook, which LWL announced Tuesday, was recovered during work on Paderborn’s new city administration and is now under conservation.
- Archaeologists found it in a medieval latrine, a waterlogged, air-tight setting that can protect leather, wood and wax for centuries.
- Made of leather, wood and wax, it holds ten pages, eight of them double-sided, and it was stored in a small leather pouch with a lid.
- LWL says it is the only complete medieval notebook of its kind recovered archaeologically in North Rhine-Westphalia, with only partial parallels in Lübeck and Lüneburg.
- Conservators in Münster plan high-tech imaging and consultations with script and materials experts to try to read the text, which could shed light on daily life in medieval Westphalia.