"We discovered a fragment of a fairly large shovel," Sergey Toropov, director of Novgorod State University's Center for Archaeological Research, said in a translated statement. "Most likely, it was a bread shovel, which was used to bake bread in an oven. On the reverse side, however, three squares have been carved, one inside the other."
Archaeologists discovered a wooden baking implement — likely a pizza-paddle-like tool — dating back to medieval times. (Image credit: Novgorod State University)
The preserved portion of the bread peel measures about 12 by 16 inches (30 by 40 centimeters), and it was likely crafted from oak. While one side is flat, likely for baking tasty treats, the other side had been carved with a board for the ancient game known as merels, merrelles, mills, nine-men's morris or cowboy checkers.
A typical merels (also known as nine-men's morris, mills or merrelles) board and pieces. (Image credit: Alamy)
A typical merels board has three nested squares connected by horizontal and vertical lines. Each player has nine pieces of the same color. The goal is to arrange the pieces into columns of three along the lines. When a player forms a line, they can remove any one of their opponent's pieces. In this way, merels is a mixture of tic-tac-toe and checkers. A player wins when their opponent has only two pieces left or is completely blocked. (You can play an online version here.)
RELATED STORIES"Perhaps special boards for playing merels existed in antiquity," Toropov said, "but more often, one finds playing boards scratched or carved into the flat surfaces of household objects."
"At any moment, one could mark out a board on a flat surface, find suitable pieces — for example, small stones lying underfoot, and while away some time," Toropov said.
Merel boards and playing pieces have been recovered from ninth-century archaeological sites in the kingdom of the Rus', whose ancestors were Vikings who arrived in what is now Russia in the eighth century, according to the statement, but "a find as well-preserved as the one from Staraya Russa is practically unique."
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