No, I mean a backup of the MySQL database that is the backend for a wordpress installation. You'd have backed it up
via telnet most probably. WP also has an export feature, but I've not used it - it looks like it's more or less a flat-file text export, not a true database backup. (But at least your posts would be in there, if they predate the deletions.)
Looking through my own WP content folder, it's just static files that work with the layout of the blog, not actual posted content. That all lives in the MySQL database.