More details on Novgorod, based on archaeological evidence:
  Derived from _Novgorod the Great_: _Excavations at the Medieval City_

The detail here gets quite obsessive. You may wish to only skim. Also,
when sizes are mentioned, some of them are in metric units and some of
them in English units.

Craftsmen:  The primary inhabitants of Novgorod seem to have been craftsmen.
  There were dozens of workshops, and each workshop would have employed
  several masters, many journeyman, and even more apprentices. Furthermore,
  many tradesmen, such as carpenters and mason, practiced without a workshop.
  Crafts were frequent classified into districts. Leather-work, work with
  both iron and fine metals, woodwork, and bone-carving were all quite
  commonplace. Also, every household spun, and looms were introduced into
  Novgorod in the late twelth century. Cloth was manufactured locally in
  Novgorod, as well as being imported.

Merchants:  Though in history Novgorod is famed as a port city, in reality
  the majority of the population were craftsmen, as mentioned above. 
  Nonetheless there was certainly a strong merchant class. Land transport
  for trade was usually in the form of sledge runners, or, occasionally,
  skis. A variety of ships existed for ocean transport. Note that wheeled
  transport was virtually unknown.

Feudal Lords:  Bailiffs or reeves frequently managed estates outside the
  city for a lord who lived in the city; it was fairly rare for a lord to
  actually be needed at his estate.

Literacy:  The population of Novgorod was apparently highly literate (of
  course, this is "highly literate" with respect to the period). However,
  the level of education was probably higher in Latin countries of the time.
  Nonetheless, in the Germanic and west Slav areas, where the Latin was the
  written language, and so foreign to the majority of the population, it
  seems as if this might have been a hindrance to literacy. Birch-bark
  was commonly used for brief notes, and notes were hand-delivered. The bark
  was written upon by scratching or engraving its surface. Such a piece of
  bark would, on the average, measure 8-10 inches by 2-3 inches. The bark
  was usually rolled into a cylinder shape. These letters seem to always
  have been written in Cyrillic; it looks more like modern printed Russian
  script than the cursive of the English medieval court, or modern
  handwritten Russian, since writing with a metal point on bark made
  cursive rather difficult. The language used was always Russian. There
  is no real punctuation, or even gaps between the letters of different
  words. The messages were never signed, nor was there ever an address
  on them; they were probably carried by servants familiar to both sender
  and recipient. They generally open with the name of sender and recipient
  ("From A to B", "Order from A to B", "Petition to A from B", etc.) It
  is possible that messages might have been dictated to literate messengers
  who read them at other end, with both sender and recipient being 
  illiterate. They were usually of almost telegraphic brevity.

Agriculture, Etc.:  The primary crop in the area surrounding the city was
  rye. Meadows surround the city on all sides, and the citizens apparently
  mowed their own hay for their animals. Animal husbandry was only possible
  some miles away, but there seems to hae been a fair amount of domesticated
  animals. Wild animals were comparatively rare, though some hunting was
  done (with bow and arrow). This primarily took the form of hunting birds
  near Lake Ilmen, where the conditions are exceptional. Fishing was done
  with seine nets, both in Lake Ilmen and in the Volkhov River.

Artwork:  Particularly notable about Novgorod is its crafting of beautiful 
  religious icons. It was also not unusual for wood, particularly furniture,
  to be elaborately carved. (The local woods were pine, spruce, juniper,
  oak, birch, lime, and elm, with beech and yew imported from the southwest,
  larch from the northeast, and boxwood from the southeast.)

Coinage:  Novgorodian coins do not contain a representation of the Prince, 
  as would be typical of this period, but instead, the personification
  of Novgorod: St. Sophia with the legend, "Novgorod the Great".

Street Construction:  The streets were covered with logs, and periodically 
  renewed by laying a new layer of logs on top of the previous surface. 
  Between 953 AD and 1462 AD, the streets were renewed 28 times. The wood 
  used was generally pine. Three or four fairly thin (10-20 cm in diameter) 
  poles were laid longitudinally along the axis of the street. On them were
  laid, transversely, side by side, split half-logs of 40-50 cm in diameter,
  with a length equal to the width of the street. This was done in such a
  way that the lower layers provided support for the upper ones. Pine is 
  very combustible, and not uncommonly, fire destroyed streets and buildings
  over a considerable area, which then got reconstructed simultaneously.
  The houses were not built on stone sleepers.

Houses:  

  In the yards around buildings, dung often occurred in thick
  masses, even in the yards of the most prosperous; it is clear that the
  yards were never cleaned and the dung never carted away. This constant
  state of filth required the throwing down of twigs when a building was
  erected, and laying of log paths or tracks in many of the yards, and
  always at the gateway. Moreover, such conditions made it essential for
  the owner of a yard not to allow its surface to fall lower than his
  neighbor's, or otherwise he would receive his rainwater. Homes were 
  usually of wood construction; only the most wealthy and prominent
  built homes of stone. 

  The ground of Novgorod was damp and of uneven firmness, but large
  numbers of houses did not have any foundation; most foundations
  consisted of a very rough platform of logs or planks beneath the
  corners of the walls of the house. Buildings were box-frame, with
  horizontal logs; logs were never mitred together, and the walls of
  buildings were not plastered over. Floors were usually wooden. There
  were vents in houses to allow smoke from the stove to escape; there
  were no flues. Roofing usually consisted of shingles. For doors,
  a four-part construction was used (two jambs, a lintel, and a 
  threshold piece). None of the houses opened directly into the street,
  but always into a yard; external doors were well secured with locks.
  Pieces of mica were used for windows.

  Yards were separated from each other and from the streets by stake
  fences, from 12-20 cm in diameter. Each yard had its own entry closed 
  by a gate. The gate had a decked surface, and always stood back from
  one to one and a half meters from the street decking. The fence
  curved back to the gateposts, making it easier for vehicles to enter;
  also, due to the narrowness of the streets, these provided a convenient
  recess when two sledges had to pass one another. The opening was roughly
  two meters wide; the gates had a gabled roof over them, and the decking
  at the gateway normally continued about 5 meters onwards, though 
  occasionally it went right up to the house.

  Yards were mainly inhabited by feudal lords with their servants, though
  during the thirteenth century, this slowly changed over towards
  dependent craftsmen, living as separate families in small huts and
  working for master craftsmen. Some buildings in the yards may also
  have been used as baths. Both single-story and two-story houses existed.

Water Supply:  There were wooden pipes (two half-tree trunks, hollowed out
  and fit together), used for drainage. However, there was no system of
  piped water _to_ Novgorod; the pipes were designed to drain water away
  from the buildings and down to the river.

Burials:  Mound burials were typical in rural areas. Nothing is stated 
  about burial in the city.

Metal Items:  Razors and scissors were not uncommon; men were usually 
  clean-shaven. Both padlocks and fixed locks were used to secure doors
  and containers. Smithing techniques included free hammering, welding,
  thermal working, turning the metal with grindstones and files, cutting
  with cold chisel, polishing, soldering, coating with other metals,
  incrusting with such metals as silver and gold, and smith's artistic
  forging. Pendants and amulets were frequently worn by women, and usually
  intended to ward off evil influence; the images depicted were usually
  Pagan in origin. Both sexes wore decorative pins. There were also many
  bracelets, which were more common than finger rings.

Weapons:  Included swords, knives, boar spears, javelins, normal spears,
  battle-axes, and maces. Bow and arrow were used for hunting and fighting.
  The composite bow does not yet exist, but crossbows exist.